The Shoulders of Giants
by starbucksgal
Summary: "So, what we're left with are the ramifications of covering up that the President had MS, the senior staffers who are coming out of the closet, the Christian Right, and the fact that America still expects us to run it." Josh POV, post-Season 3.
1. What Kind Of Day Has It Been?

DISCLAIMER  
So, there's this guy named Aaron Sorkin, and he's a much better writer than I can ever hope to be. Plus, he owns the copyright to them, which has certain annoying legal ramifications. I'm borrowing them without permission, without any intent of infringement, and without a squitty little atom of a chance that I'll ever make a profit. I should add that I'll try to return them all in one piece, with permanent psychological scarring and the guarantee that they're all going to need years in therapy by the time this particular vacation is over. I'm not an American, nor am I a politician, and from these two facts you should draw the conclusion that I am not by any means an expert in American politics.  
  
SPOILERS  
To be on the safe side, spoilers apply for everything through to 'Posse Comitatus', although in practice I doubt that much from late Season 3 will be showing up here. If it happened in Season 1 or 2, it will most probably appear in this story in some form. At the present time, I would warn you to expect explicit spoilers for In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen and Hartsfield's Landing. I'll update that list as more become likely to appear.  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES  
This is a repost of a fic of which the first three chapters were originally posted between March and April 2002. Contentwise, little has changed, and my main reason for reposting is that, in the original version, I asserted that this was, technically, going to take place within the timeline of the show, which is no longer true, as I'm being forced to ignore a couple of major plot points. I'm blaming this mostly on 'Stirred', Mary-Louise Parker, and the fact that their season finale bore no resemblance to mine. Still rated PG-13 for probable language and two men in a loving, consensual relationship. No sex. Guys smooching. Get over it. Don't say I didn't warn you. Yes, that does mean that we're in an Amy-free universe.  
  
I owe Rhiannon, my recently-appointed beta-reader and less recently-appointed best friend and mocker, a hug and a huge promo for A Touch of Evil, her Austin Power's fanfic which can be linked to through 'The Hysterical Rhino' on my Favourite Author's page.   
  
To The Hysterical Rhino. For teaching me about life, the universe, and everything. 42.  
  
  
  
The Shoulders of Giants  
  
Chapter 1: What Kind Of Day Has It Been  
  
  
I remember the last campaign as a series of lower-grade hotels and occasionally, when finances were particularly tight, a middle-of-the-road motel. Our candidate was a liberal economics brainiac from New Hampshire, the donations were not exactly pouring in. I can't remember exactly when we became more upmarket. Hotels on the campaign trail are too impersonal, we're suffering from too much sleep deprivation, and they merge into a long blur. This conference room in Springfield is such a room. We've moved in, created a temporary war room, and soon will move out again. I should be crunching some numbers, or trying to at least, but I've zoned out and I'm currently listening to Sam and Toby bicker good-naturedly. I call it good-natured. To someone not versed in the dynamics of the senior staff it probably sounds like a mini-civil war.   
  
"I call it imagery."  
  
"And I call it bad writing."  
  
"Imagery is art."  
  
"I don't question that, Sam, I just don't think using a comma or a period every now and then would actually hurt the imagery, and I think it makes us look bad when it appears that the Deputy Communications Director is unfamiliar with the standard rules of English grammar and punctuation."  
  
"See, and I just think that if he actually has to give this speech, then it's not going to matter much whether it makes us look bad or not."  
  
I would interrupt, but I'm amazed Toby got that all out in one breath, and I do think that Sam has a point. He's been saddled with writing the 'we have to say something if we lose' speech. It's one of the non-perks of being the Deputy rather than the Director. Plus, my other reason for not interrupting is that Sam looks damn sexy with his glasses skewiff and his self-righteousness and his loose tie. I let them go on arguing as Sam keeps writing, blithely ignoring the punctuation keys on his laptop, and am disturbed from my private musings by a finger tapping on my shoulder as our now-permanent pollster tosses a file on my desk and signs to me. I recognize most of the shapes formed by her fingers even before Kenny translates them.  
  
"America's saying that you're an irrepressible egomaniac who needs to know that the public loves you."  
  
I tell her that it's in my genetic code to be impatient and sign 'thank you', before she retreats to the corner of the room which she originally staked out for herself when we arrived here ten days ago. Then CJ breezes in looking entirely too chirpy, tosses a transcript of the briefing on top of my numbers and various other random pieces of crap, and sits down with a satisfied smirk.  
  
"You are far too chipper given that you're a woman for whom the next twelve hours will decide her career for the next four years, and, in fact, most of her life after that."  
  
Toby's hands actually fall off the keyboard in a reaction to what I can only assume was the pig of a sentence I just produced. His mouth opens and closes and he finally comes out with,  
  
"There's such a good reason nobody suggested you should work for me instead of Leo."  
  
"I can translate," CJ says. "Although I do agree that it's a good thing we don't pay you to be eloquent."  
  
Possibly I should backtrack and explain why the four of us are even in Illinois. Right after Dr Bartlet's birthday party, when I was trying to juggle the appointment of a Deputy Political Director for the campaign with that small matter of running the country, my addled brain figured that it would be a whole lot easier if the staff of '98 took over. The thing is, our main opponent is Hoynes. Yeah, we said that no Vice President in history had challenged a sitting President for re-election and somehow reasoned that Hoynes wouldn't do it either. We were wrong, and he was running against us, and things were going to hell because Bruno had no idea how to handle him. I worked for the man for five months, I was his campaign manager, I know his weak points. And so somehow, I managed to convince Leo and the President that Toby, Sam, CJ and I were more than capable of running both the country and the campaign. We took over and surprised even ourselves. We farmed out a lot of material to our deputies and assistant deputies, Simon Glazer generally takes care of the day-to-day White House press briefing when CJ's out of Washington, I brought Joey on board permanently, and I gave Donna a raise and permission to call herself the Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff if she so wished, along with a warning that she would sound ridiculous answering the phone like that. In return for this, she runs my office, calls me twice a day to check I'm sleeping and eating right, and doesn't go to work for a dot-com company offering her a starting salary on a par with the annual Congressional budget.  
  
Tonight we get to see whether we actually pulled this off, or whether we've been fooling ourselves since Hartsfield's Landing.  
  
As two Secret Service agents enter the room, we all shuffle our chairs backward and get to our feet as the President and Leo follow, flanked by a black man and a blond Canadian woman whose eyebrows shoot into her hairline the instant she sees my area of the table. So I refused to hire a campaign assistant. So sue me. The last one – the last one apart from Donna, I mean – was forced onto me four days after she left for Wisconsin during the first campaign and lasted exactly thirty-seven hours. I fired him and muddled through. He had blond curtains and a really bad case of acne and wore flowered ties and brought me coffee and called me Mr Lyman. I'm a creature of habit. Donna or Sam looks after me, or else I live with the mess.   
  
"You need an assistant," she announces, walking past Leo and Charlie and immediately beginning to organize files.   
  
"Good morning to you too, Donnatella." I raise my eyebrows at Leo and he shrugs.  
  
"The White House can live without her for a day. You apparently can't. How're the numbers coming?"  
  
"Early numbers look good."  
  
I pull the file out from underneath the pile of stuff that's ended up on top of it and call Joey over, and she starts to talk Leo through the information she's accumulated since her people started on the phones two hours ago. On the other side of the conference table, the President is reviewing the 'we have to say something if we lose' speech, while Toby and Sam have moved on to bickering about the acceptance one. Their laptops appear to have been caught in a blizzard of paper and Sam has acquired some interesting blue flecks on his teeth, probably an occupational hazard from spending two hours gnawing the end of a pencil. CJ's on her cellphone to Carol, sorting out the latest crisis that arose in the White House briefing this morning. The noise is going to put the local drugstore out of stock on Advil by noon, my stomach is doing the tarantella all over that line you cross right before throwing up, and the adrenaline in my system alone is probably providing enough energy to theoretically power up a couple of 747's.  
  
This is my life blood.  
  
______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
  
10 HOURS LATER  
  
By 8pm, my fingernails are bitten down as far as they can go. Our numbers are still good, but I keep having this feeling that right before the polls close in two hours and we get the official numbers, this is all going to go up in smoke and Healthgate's going to come back to bite us in the ass. Donna's banned me from coffee and alcohol on the grounds that it's bad for me, I have a sensitive system, I've barely eaten all day, and I'm high off just the adrenaline. I'm sure they're all perfectly logical reasons, but the lack of any intoxicants is not helping my state of mind.  
  
"Calm down."  
  
"Can I just send you back to Washington?"  
  
"Yeah, Josh, because the President's going to let you borrow Air Force One for a couple hours."  
  
"I'm nervous, Donna!"  
  
"I'm aware of that, Joshua. I think I would have noticed your nervousness even without the chewed nails, the copious amounts of caffeine, and the fact that every item of furniture in that conference room is scuffed from your kicking it."  
  
"Is that a new thing?"  
  
"Is what a new thing?"  
  
"My kicking furniture when I'm stressed."  
  
"No. Check the legs on the chairs in the Roosevelt Room if you don't believe me."  
  
"We're digressing into a big pit."  
  
"I thought that was something we did. I thought it was normal."  
  
"Yes." I make a desperate attempt to get this conversation back on track. "The point is, I'm nervous, and you're mocking me, and the smart-mouthed assistant thing was fun, but I expect a more supportive attitude in a friend."  
  
"Yeah, that's not gonna happen anytime soon. Quit eating your fingers."  
  
"What if we lose?"  
  
"We're not going to lose."  
  
"We might, and I think I would feel a little better about it if I were inebriated, so can I please go get drunk?"  
  
"Because that would look good on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times. 'Deputy Chief of Staff Plastered At Illionis Primary.' CJ would kill you."  
  
"CJ likes me."  
  
"This from the author of the secret plan to fight inflation. You are not drinking tonight, no matter how much CJ likes you. This is mainly because I don't want to have another fight with Sam over who gets to deal with you drunk this time. It is, however, also partly because I don't think the President would appreciate it. You're going to go in there…" She jabs a finger at the door of the ballroom. "…and talk to high-ranking Democrats and play nice and not get in a drunken brawl with the Vice President."  
  
"Damn you and logic."  
  
"Yeah, damn me and logic." I feel a hard finger digging in the small of my back. "Let's go." 


	2. Black and White Static

Chapter 2: Black and White Static  
  
  
The Illinois Primary is a state election. I freely admit, for us, it's a big deal. Just like 1998, this is going to be our High Noon. Nonetheless, there are really very few high-ranking Democrats here. However, Leo being Leo, we got re-election dangled over our heads and then Toby and I were told that should go into the ballroom for half an hour and play nice. And since Donna seems to have appointed herself Leo's gofer – which I thought was strange, being that I was under the impression that she received a paycheck in return for being my gofer, but then I remembered that she needs a raise – the ballroom is in fact where I have ended up. I want to kill them both. I've been standing around for the past ten minutes making polite chit-chat with Senator Haskell, and all I really want is to be back in the suite, downing endless cups of coffee and waiting for the first exit polls and trying very hard to keep my eyes and hands off Sam. It's very difficult to conduct a clandestine relationship while living in a hotel, surrounded by campaign staffers and four or five of your closest friends at all hours of the day and night. You can translate that as, I haven't gotten laid in a while.   
  
I'm staring morosely into my apple juice – the reason I'm drinking this is because it looks enough like bourbon that the whole of the Beltway doesn't start thinking I'm a wuss, and the reason I'm not drinking actual bourbon is that I'm a responsible adult for whom the working portion of the evening is not yet over, plus, the mere concept of having to be polite to this many public officials, many of whom understand that were it not illegal, I would have poked their eyes out with forks a long time ago, is killing off more brain cells than straight-up IV pure alcohol would ever have a hope of doing. This abstinence has nothing to do with the fact that Donna has threatened to hide my car keys if I so much as look at alcohol. But yes, I'm staring morosely into my apple juice while the aforementioned Senator drones on about the Marriage Recognition Act. I have very little idea why he's talking about this, particularly since I distinctly remember the President vetoing it eighteen months ago. I seem to recall a disastrous meeting with Congressman Skinner on the subject, immediately preceded by an even more disastrous conversation with Donna during the course of which I may very possibly have made a comment regarding her lack of self-worth. Sam, at that point, was at 37,000 feet in Air Force One trying to talk Toby into including a quote from Mao in a speech. I had seen him reading The Little Red Book earlier in the week and had wondered when it was going to crop up in a speech, but…  
  
"…do you think, Josh?"  
  
What do I think about what? I drag myself back to the present and try to remember what he had been droning on about. Marriage Recognition Act. Nope, that's a non-starter. He could have said anything. He could have said homosexuals should be burned in hell. I go for a suitably generic, 'I certainly think that's worth considering, Senator', and I get the hell out of there.  
  
"Leo," I announce, throwing myself into a chair in the Presidential suite, "Next time you need someone to do the polite conversation thing, send Sam and Donna, okay?"  
  
"Who'd you get stuck with?" CJ looks as if she'd like to crawl into the nearest bed and sleep through re-election.  
  
"Haskell." I blow out a small hurricane. "That man could bore Avogadro without trying too hard."  
  
"Avogadro?"  
  
"He was a chemistry guy. He sat in a darkened room and divided lots of masses of chemicals by the number of molecules in them." That doesn't sound quite right. "Or something like that. Anyway, he found a constant. He was on hallucinogenics, I swear to you. It's what drugs did in those days, they sent people into dark rooms to come up with stuff that would torture college students in centuries to come."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I'm just saying." I polish off my drink. "I'm thinking Avogadro would be pretty much immune to boredom, but Haskell could manage to bore even him to suicide without too much effort."  
  
"You took Chemistry?"  
  
"I minored in it for a while. It's evil. Also, he dated Marilyn Monroe."  
  
"Haskell?" CJ's starting to look as though she's losing the will to live.  
  
"Avogadro." I twirl a pen. "No, wait, maybe that was Einstein."  
  
"Josh?" She looks far too amused. "I know I said we didn't pay you to be eloquent, but the sheer psychotic kangarooness of this conversation defies belief."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Because this is what we do when we're waiting for the exit polls to come in. We pretend we're not nervous and as a result, we end up having the most inane conversations imaginable about absolutely nothing. I haven't thought about Avogadro in years. I can't even remember the damn constant, other than that it's some ridiculously high number. I sound drunk. I'm beginning to wonder whether someone spiked my entirely non-intoxicating apple juice.  
  
"Josh. Calm down."  
  
I didn't notice Sam put his hand on my shoulder, and I turn around sharply when I hear his voice.  
  
"I'm fine."  
  
"Like hell you are."  
  
"Yeah, well…"  
  
"Yeah, well nothing. We're doing okay. 72 hour returns are good, numbers from the north-west and mid-east are good…"  
  
"Run out of adjectives there, Spanky?"  
  
"Something like that."  
  
With no warning, the TV blares out from across the room. "With sixty-four percent of precincts reporting, we are now prepared to call the election for President Josiah Bartlet…"  
  
He says more, but we don't hear any of it. The room erupts. We've won, and now, no matter what happens in New York and California and even though it's not official, we're going to the Convention and we've crushed Hoynes to the ground again. Hey, I'm not at all vindictive in any way.  
  
"Mmmmph."  
  
I've been hugging Sam so hard that he can't breathe, and I think I may have actually bruised some of his ribs. I don't think either of us care. Somebody's popped a bottle of champagne, there's music and dancing and whooping, and if I thought earlier in the day that the noise level was high, it had nothing on the volume now. We're so damn loud that I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we were actually breaking some kind of law. The next thing I know, Leo's hitting us both on the back.  
  
"You did it, guys. You won the Illinois Primary."  
  
We're all getting slapped and high-fived by various people. This is the second time we've done this in four years, and it means more this time, if that's possible. Sure, last time was hard and we didn't even know if the voters knew who we were. I had said it myself, that the Democrats weren't going to nominate another liberal academic former-Governor from New Hampshire, and it was overwhelming that they did. This time… this time we had different hurdles to overcome. In the first election, we were just unknown and we could do something about that. In this election, we were corrupt and we had Healthgate hanging over our heads, and we weren't sure that we could do anything about that. We spent ten months and a lot of money educating the voting public about MS, and for the nomination at least, it's paid off. And through it all – through Healthgate and Congress and everything – Sam was the one who kept me grounded. I owe him for that. I remember our first Illinois Primary, and I catch his eye across the room and my lips form the words.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
He smiles and gives me a thumbs up, and then I feel another thump on my back.  
  
"You did good, Josh."  
  
"So did you, Mr President."  
  
"We're not through with this yet."  
  
"No sir, but we will be." He takes my hand in a steel grip. "You've got two hundred people next door waiting for a victory speech."  
  
"Yes, we do."  
  
He goes to Sam, who is gleefully ripping up the 'we have to say something if we lose' speech, to get his copy of the victory speech, and we follow him out of the suite, all five of us – me, Sam, CJ, Toby and Leo – on cloud ten. That's one higher than cloud nine, so you can imagine it's pretty damn cool up here. The ballroom erupts when he goes in, as the Bartlet For America supporters rise to their feet en masse. After the last year of worrying and waiting and not knowing whether Healthgate was going to kill our credibility with the Democratic Party, never mind the rest of the country, it feels good. And we may not be there yet, but hell, we're a lot further on than we were last May.   
  
We're on cloud ten. Someone should give me some kind of warning about the fact that we're about to be sent plummeting to earth with a crash, in a freefall that begins when the President stops moving and then sits down heavily in the nearest chair.  
  
"Mr President?" Leo sounds worried.  
  
"Leo. My eyes. I can't see properly. My legs… they don't feel right.."  
  
"Jed?!" And now he just sounds frantic. I haven't heard Leo call him Jed since election night 1998. "Somebody find Abbey!"  
  
His vision is going. His legs don't feel right. In the past year, I've read more journal articles and briefing books and Internet sites than I can count about relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. I was there for the State of the Union 2000 – I knew what his symptoms had been and eighteen months later, I found out what they had meant. What I'm saying is, I've never seen one first hand, but I am more familiar than I'd like with the theoretical progression of an episode. The senior staff have scattered – I heard Toby mutter something about finding Dr Bartlet and I saw CJ and Donna disappear with a couple of Secret Service agents to exercise crowd control. I can see the top of Sam's head over the crowd. Leo's talking to the President. I'm the only one left. I suppose it's inevitable that I'll be the one grabbed by a reporter.  
  
"Josh Lyman?"  
  
I nod dumbly. My head is spinning and I'm starting to see fuzzy lines in front of my eyes and I can hear music playing on on the CD player regardless. I think it might be Hail To The Chief, but I couldn't tell you for certain because it's strobing between music and sirens, and I pray to God to not let me have an attack. Not here, not now. There's a reporter standing in front of me, and if I give in to West Virginia White Pride now, every paper in North America will be running a story above the fold that, not only did the President of the United States have a flare-up of his multiple sclerosis at the Illinois Primary, it also came out that the Deputy Chief of Staff is mentally unstable. I can't afford to let that happen. I try to force the sirens out of my head and I catch a glimpse of Sam heading my way as the reporter starts to speak again.  
  
"Mr Lyman, can you tell us anything about the President's condition?" 


	3. Two Centimeters of a Miracle

Chapter 3: Two Centimeters of a Miracle  
  
  
Tonight has been a night of extreme panic and chaos, although Sam assures me that Rosslyn was worse, and even though the sirens have receded somewhat, I'm still feeling like I have the potential to be the guy who falls in the hole. The result of this is that Sam has been sticking to me like glue for the past hour, and I've been leaning on him both physically and emotionally. I haven't thought anything of it until a reporter for one of the conservative papers starts grilling me, ostensibly about the President, but adding in a couple of thinly-disguised questions about my relationship with Sam. I may be teetering on the brink of a PTSD attack, but I can spot an 'are you gay' question a mile off. I fumble out an answer of the no comment variety and get rid of him. Ten seconds later, I realize that I was holding Sam's hand the whole time he was talking. I look down at our linked fingers and swear, and immediately I drag my boyfriend into the nearest men's room.  
  
"We have to tell them," I point out unnecessarily.  
  
"This might not even be a thing."  
  
"On the other hand," I run my fingers through my hair. "If he runs an op-ed piece on, oh, gay men in government, with a few not-so-oblique references to us, someone in the press room's going to pick up on it."  
  
"Maybe we're being overly paranoid."  
  
"He was already asking questions – we're unlikely to have quelled his suspicions by holding hands while I said no comment. I dunno." My shoulders slump. "Maybe we are being overly paranoid, but at the same time, this could be on the front page of the National Enquirer next week. I'm just saying that they deserve to hear it from us and not from Danny Concannon."  
  
Frankly, I'm amazed we managed to keep it a secret for this long. But tonight? Tonight when the President had an MS episode not two hours ago, when Leo's climbing every wall in the building, when Toby's yelling at anyone who comes within ten feet of him, when CJ's doing a remarkably good impression of a rampaging bull. Given the choice, these are not the circumstances in which either of us would choose to dump this on them. We haven't been given the choice. So Sam goes to look for Toby, I round up CJ and Donna, we drag them into the Presidential suite, and we prepare to throw two perfectly good political careers out of the window.  
  
"Sam and I have a thing we need to give you a heads-up on," I announce. "We just want to warn you in case anyone gets the question, and sir…" I direct my final point at the President. "If you want them, our resignations will be on your desk first thing Monday morning."  
  
"You create another secret plan to fight inflation, Josh?"  
  
"No, sir." I manage a smile at the familiar sarcasm.  
  
"Josh and I are in a relationship," Sam interrupts, having clearly decided that if I'm left to them, we'll all be stuck here through re-election. "Since Rosslyn."  
  
I don't think I've ever heard this particular group of people go this quiet for this long – even Donna, who knew about us already but seems reluctant to be the first one to talk. The President breaks the silence.  
  
"I don't accept your resignations."  
  
"Sir…"  
  
"Don't argue with me, Josh."  
  
"Can I say something?" CJ asks, somewhat redundantly since she then doesn't actually wait for permission before she starts talking. "Why are we only now finding out about this?"  
  
"There's a possibility that suspicions may have been aroused tonight," I admit. "That's all. We didn't want you to get this when you opened the paper."  
  
"I'm tempted to ask how it happened, but I'm afraid you'll tell me that you were drunk and fell into bed together."  
  
"Alcohol," Sam begins defensively, "Had nothing whatsoever to do with it. For this, you have Carl Leroy and his cronies to thank."  
  
I sit down and rub my temples, trying to ward off the oncoming headache, and I let Sam tell the story. Because not only is he about ten times more articulate than I can ever hope to be, for much of this I was a little bit unconscious and under general anaesthetic so really, I can't give much of a first-hand account.  
  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
  
George Washington University Hospital  
Two Years Earlier  
  
  
Toby had driven them to the hospital, running three red lights, breaking at least seven city traffic ordinances, and ditching the car in the first, illegal, spot available, choosing to worry about potential fatalities now and parking tickets later. By the time the paramedics had reached the ER door, he and CJ and Sam had caught up with the gurney and could hear him mumbling and trying to pull off his oxygen mask. The third time, Sam heard it, pushed through Toby, CJ, Leo, Zoey, and the crowd of random medical personnel who had materialized out of nowhere, and he grabbed Josh's hand.  
  
"You went to New Hampshire. We both did. You came and got me."  
  
He was shoved out of the way then, but only when the nurse crashed into him did he realize that he was shaking and that his hands were covered in Josh's blood. Then Leo laid a hand on his shoulder and he jumped three feet in the air. He was edgy, to put it mildly.  
  
"You okay, man?"  
  
Okay? Sam considered the question. He was hearing gunshots and seeing flashes in his head, he had no real idea how the President was, and his best friend's lung was collapsed and blood had stopped flowing to his brain.   
  
"I will be," he answered as honestly as humanly possible. "How's the President doing?"  
  
"Making bad jokes." Leo shrugged. "He'll be fine, they just want to do a bit of digging around. But Josh… man, I thought we were all okay."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I gotta meet with Hoynes and Nancy and Fitz in a half hour. Have CJ brief the press when I'm done, and I'll be back in a little bit. He'll be okay, yeah?" He rubbed the day-old stubble on his chin. "This is Josh. He's too damn stubborn to die."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Sam, you got some blood…"  
  
Sam nodded. He didn't tell Leo that he didn't want to wash the blood off because in an irrational corner of his brain, if Josh was bleeding then he was still alive. He washed his hands and wrote the brief, he avoided telling CJ that he pulled her down, did the morning shows, and worried about Donna. In between times, he hid in his office and tried not to break down. It had just hit 7:30, having only just arrived back from the TV station when he got the call. It was Dr Keller, telling him that Josh's heart had stopped beating in surgery, that they were using all of their capabilities but that it didn't look good. Sam hung up the phone and collapsed limply into his chair, tears welling up in his smoky eyes. That was where Donna found him half an hour later. The clock on his desk flashed 8:06, the hum of the Washington public beat in his head, a dull throb reminding him of what he didn't think he could ever return to. He could scarcely believe that little more than a day ago, that had been him, and in ten short hours their lives had collapsed; neither of them sure that they would ever feel whole again.  
  
That morning, Sam discovered that Donnatella Moss, Madison Community College drop-out and Josh Lyman traffic cop, had more perception than the rest of the senior staff put together.   
  
"You're in love with him," she said flatly, "And he's in love with you, and you both have been for God knows how long, but you both dance around the issue like it's going to attack you."  
  
"He's not in love with me."  
  
"What makes you think that?"  
  
"'Cause he's in love with you."  
  
"Sam, I love Josh like a brother, but I would sooner sleep with the President." She wrinkled her nose up. "Okay, maybe not quite, but I mean, Josh is so much like a brother that it's actually bordering on incest."  
  
"You would've taken the bullet."  
  
"We all would've taken the bullet." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "How long?"  
  
"How long what?"  
  
"Have you been in love with him."  
  
"On some levels," Sam shrugged. "That first day I met him on the Hill. Head over heels… since he rescued me from the corporate vortex of Manhattan that day he showed up in my office at Gage Whitney, soaking wet, to tell me he had found the real thing. That was the second time in two days he had been in New York, and you know what? The first time, if he had been able to honestly tell me that he thought Hoynes was the real thing, I would have chucked everything in right then. Then the Illinois Primary, when C-SPAN called it for the Governor and I just looked at him, and all I could do was tell him thank you. I owe him everything."  
  
"Then you should tell him that."  
  
"I can't."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Because… because this is not the kind of thing that this administration wants debated on Meet the Press, goddamit!"   
  
"Screw Meet the Press." Donna sat down on the floor. "Life's too damn short, Sam. I'm just saying, it would be wrong if he never heard it."  
  
The phone rang then, to tell them that the surgical team would be taking Josh off bypass soon. He had crashed twice since they had called Sam two hours ago, and they had very little idea whether he would survive coming off the machine, but it was a risk they had to take, and all they could do was hope. He left Donna in the bullpen and ran into CJ outside the press room. Somehow, she managed to get it out of him that he had pushed her down and had her necklace, and all he could think of to say was, 'I didn't want you to feel beholden to me.' He babbled, for a good few minutes, about it turning into an episode of I Dream Of Jeannie before actually giving CJ her necklace back. Then she asked him if he had been scared.  
  
"Yeah."   
  
There was a lot in that one word. He had heard Gina's yell and had reacted, and only after the rear window of the police car had exploded did he start to feel actual terror. About ten minutes later, that had turned into fear for Josh's life, a feeling that had settled around his heart like ice and was showing no signs of letting up. It wasn't going to let up until Josh was out of surgery and he had seen for himself that he was okay. So the truth was, he was still scared. He didn't tell her that.   
  
"I'll be in my office."  
  
He and Donna were still in his office when the call came through from GW at noon. Josh was out of surgery. He was groggy and he had a long road ahead of him, but he was going to be okay. Donna pushed him through the bullpen and the labyrinth of corridors in the West Wing and into the parking lot. She opened his door, started the ignition and sat him down. He shut the engine off again, leaned over, and opened the passenger door.   
  
"Get in."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because you're not going to rest until you've seen for yourself that he's okay, and because he'll want to see you as well."  
  
Twenty minutes later, Sam entered the private recovery room past the Secret Service agent stationed outside, listening for a minute to the reassuring beep of the monitors before sitting down. Josh had fallen back asleep. Sam held his hand, telling him everything he had told Donna, and finishing up,  
  
"You saved me from the quagmire of corporate law and you saved me from Lisa, and I owe you for that. And the only reason I just told you everything there, other than it being true, is because Donna's outside and the first thing she's going to ask me when I go out there, before she even asks me if you're okay, will be 'did you tell him?', and if I tell her no, I'll be called a wuss or a chicken or something equally derogatory. So I've told you, and you know, just because you're asleep doesn't mean I didn't say it."  
  
He stopped there and was getting up when Josh's grip on his fingers tightened and a voice, raspy from having had a tube down his throat for fifteen hours, spoke to the ceiling.  
  
"Love you too."  
  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
  
I experienced first hand only the last five minutes of what Sam is now describing to the President and the White House senior staff, and although you may have trouble believing it, neither he nor Donna had ever told me the rest of it until tonight. I had been so busy recovering from the near-fatal gunshot wound, and later, spiralling into that rather spectacular meltdown that climaxed on Christmas Eve, I had never really thought about the hell those two must have gone through that night, two years ago now, not that anyone would ever imagine that it's been that long. I check my watch. Though Donna may mock me for its time-keeping abilities or lack thereof, the date function has always been fairly reliably. May 17th, 2002. My brain takes a second to catch up to my subconcious, and I realize, somewhat belatedly, that Rosslyn was exactly two years ago today. It's not an anniversary I care to celebrate, but for a minute I turn my attention to whoever it is out there who was looking out for me – maybe God, maybe Joanie, maybe my dad – and I thank them for whatever intervention they sent to me. For what Sam refers to as my brilliant surgical team and my two centimeters of a miracle.  
  
I turn my attention back to the room, where Sam has wound up his story with a comment that I missed, but that appears to have prompted CJ to ask a question.  
  
"You live together?" she asks.   
  
"I go to my apartment a couple of times a week to pick up my mail and check my messages, but since last year's Big Block Of Cheese Day, more or less."  
  
Sam's more or less moving into my apartment was more my decision than his. That week, I hadn't seen him outside of work at all, he was sleeping at the office, and he was on edge. Stephanie Gault's grandfather pushed him over. So Toby and Donna and CJ and I went out and got him drunk, as we discussed. I took him to my place, I put him to bed, and he kind of just didn't leave. It wasn't something we discussed. It just happened.  
  
"Well…"  
  
"Sam, Josh." I look up at Leo. "Put together a statement that CJ can give to the press if she gets the question. In the meantime, if it's what you want, stop hiding and let people draw their own conclusions."  
  
I wait for the other shoe to drop. Seriously, these people just found out that their Deputy Chief of Staff and Deputy Communications Director have been in a homosexual relationship for almost two years. They're taking it far too calmly. After two full minutes of silence, it would appear that there isn't another shoe.   
  
"Technically, this isn't the business of the White House press corps or the American people, but if we get asked and we don't answer, it's going to get blown up out of all proportion. If they ask, we tell them exactly where this relationship stands, and after that we go back to not commenting on the private lives of White House staff. Right now, you have a country to run and a nomination to win."  
  
I notice that people around me have taken this for the dismissal that it is, and that everyone else is starting to collect their things and stand up. I get to my feet and pull my jacket on as we move towards the door. Sam and I are stopped halfway out the door by the President.  
  
"Guys? For want of a better word, and although it may be coming a bit late in the game, congratulations." 


	4. The Ignorant Tightass Club

Chapter 4: The Ignorant Tightass Club  
  
  
"It's not."  
  
"Toby."  
  
"It's not over."  
  
"Nobody in the room disputed that, Toby, and my point, if you wouldn't mind shutting up long enough to let me make it…"  
  
CJ and Toby are currently providing us with the regular Friday morning entertainment, going seven rounds in Leo's office and just barely restraining themselves from throwing things. Leo himself tuned them out long ago, now reading some random memo that's probably not important. The President is next door, having kicked us all out fifteen minutes ago. Sam has the good fortune to be at the other end of the Beltway, and Joey and Kenny have the good fortune to be at the other end of the country, doing… something. And I'm sitting here, quietly studying my shoes and hoping that neither the Press Secretary nor the Communications Director will choose to involve me in their little dispute. Just another day in the Bartlet White House, and this really is a very good example of why we get nothing done. Toby is now making ineffectual sounds and hand gestures while CJ talks over the top of him at an exceedingly high volume.   
  
"My point is that this happened ten days ago and even the National Enquirer is getting sick to death of writing about it. My point is that it happened at all, at what was supposed to be our High Noon, but the Convention is in three days and we're still the nominee. My point is that Josh and Sam…"  
  
"Hold on," I interrupt indignantly, rushing to my own defence and sputtering coffee all over Leo's carpet in the process. "You just leave Josh and Sam out of it, because to the best of my knowledge, we did nothing."  
  
"If you call almost coming out to a reporter nothing, Josh, you really do need to take a look at a dictionary at some point," CJ comments, sounding far too amused.  
  
"Your key word there was almost, and… whatever." I glare at her as best a person can glare at a six-foot tall secretary with smoke coming out of both her ears. "I was sitting here minding my own business and pretending to be invisible, so don't you drag me into this…" I wave my cup of coffee around a bit to indicate the space in between them. "Whatever the hell it is."  
  
"Shut up," they snap simultaneously.  
  
"Josh and Sam have been a non-story," I steamroller on. "The reporter kept us to himself. Maybe he didn't think he had enough evidence, maybe he's a closet gay rights advocate, maybe he thought that if he were wrong he would lose his job. I don't know and I don't particularly care, but my point is, there are now a maximum of twelve people who have found out in the last week and a half, so I can't see what either of you possibly have to complain about."  
  
"My point was that Josh and Sam have, in fact, been a non-story." CJ doesn't miss a beat as her head swivels back to me. "Had you allowed me to finish my sentence."  
  
"Could you kids take the elementary school bickering someplace else?" Leo requests without looking up. "So the rest of us can maybe get back to running the country?"  
  
We don't even get as far as the door when Carol appears in it, holding a file and looking extremely uncomfortable. She seems unsure who to give it to, finally holding it out for a random person to take and addressing the room in general.  
  
"Danny wanted to give you guys a heads-up," she announces. "That was just faxed over to him from North Carolina. It'll be appearing in the Raleigh Tribune tomorrow morning. He thought you'd want to know."  
  
Toby, growing impatient, swipes it out of Carol's hand. He takes one look at it and the first words out of his mouth are,  
  
"Call Sam. Do it now."  
  
"Sam's at State."  
  
"I honestly could care less." I can't decide whether he's being ornery or big brotherly, then he shoves the thing at me. "Get him back here. You two aren't going to be a non-story for very much longer."  
  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
Twenty-nine minutes later, when Sam has almost broken both his own neck and the land-speed record getting back from State, and has in the process managed to piss off several important Democrats while running out in the middle of a meeting, the five of us have gone into full damage control mode. My 'damage control' mode is presently bearing a remarkable resemblance to my 'panic' and 'belligerence toward Republicans' mode. Sam is rereading the article for the third time in five minutes, and the tops of his ears are rapidly turning a bright and interesting shade of red.  
  
What it is, essentially, is an expose alleging the homosexual relationship between two White House senior staffers, and yes, before you ask, we are named. I'm pretty sure the words 'filthy' and 'an example of the falling standards in even the highest ranks of American government' were used. That second one was an actual quote from an actual person. This is more the kind of thing I'd expect to read in the National Enquirer than in the actual legitimate press. Then again, I'm not what you might call an expert on the legitimacy of the press in North Carolina.   
  
"I think this has nothing to do with what happened in Illinois." Toby's voice pulls my thoughts back into Leo's office.  
  
"Before Illinois," Sam disagrees, "Josh and I were the only people who knew that we were together, and I don't think this would have happened had we not told people, which we wouldn't have done had it not been for what happened in Illinois, so I don't think you actually get to make the two events mutually exclusive."  
  
"Not mutually exclusive, no," I jump in, as Toby casts a painted look in Sam's direction, doubtless for the complete lack of grammar in his deputy's remarks. "But I think he's got a point. This isn't coming from the reporter, it's coming from us telling Babish."  
  
"Josh, if you're accusing Babish of being behind this, I gotta tell you…"  
  
"I am not accusing Babish of anything," I interrupt Leo loudly. "This is not Babish. It's his deputy."  
  
"Ainsley?" Sam looks shocked.  
  
And no, I'm not just casting about in search of the nearest blameable Republican. This thing, which I'm not even going to dignify by referring to as journalism, has a number of standard file quotes from Sam and I, and also cites 'anonymous White House sources'. These anonymous White House sources have what you might call distinctive speech patterns.  
  
"Ainsley works for us," Sam protests again.  
  
"This does not mean she wants us to win re-election," I point out. "The woman's a Republican. A Republican, I might add, who's spoken out publicly in favour of the Marriage Recognition Act and the concept that certain members of this administration are unfit to work in the White House, and who's denounced, equally publicly, homosexuality, gays in the military, extended gay rights, and Sam's sex life."  
  
"You just described a part of the Republican platform on which 90 percent of the party agree," Leo reminds me warily.  
  
"She's the only Republican who anyone in the building would have told, and she's the only human being I know who speaks in iambic pentameter."  
  
"Also," Donna announces from the doorway with no warning. "Ainsley Hayes has a thing for Sam."  
  
"We're getting you a bell." I squint at her. "What the hell do you mean?"  
  
"I mean that Ainsley Hayes has a thing for Sam."  
  
From the look on Sam's face, I'm getting the impression that it's not exactly what you would call news to him. This is absolutely something we're going to be talking about later. For the time being, Leo's still busy trying to pick holes in my theory.  
  
"Be all that as it may, Ainsley doesn't have anything like enough clout to pull off something like this."  
  
"Not in Washington," CJ agrees, joining the conversation for the first time. ""Which would explain why it's not yet on the front page of the Washington Post. In North Carolina, I'm not so sure. Her grandfather was state chairman in Raleigh. I don't think she's done it on her own, but Josh is right. She had a major part in leaking this."  
  
"Fine." Leo gives up. "I'll brief the President, I'll talk to Babish. CJ, you'll keep this out of the press room for as long as possible. Put a leash on Danny if you have to. You don't think Ainsley did this on her own. Who do we think her co-conspirator is?"  
  
"Someone from the Christian Right," Toby offers. "I have my suspicions as to whom, but I choose not to express them right now."  
  
"Okay. Go. Spin. Deal with this."  
  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
"Josh, would you, for the love of God, talk to Sam?"  
  
"Donna…"  
  
I've been brooding in my office for most of the day, and I think I've got Donna to the point where she's not sure whether to quit or tell Leo that I'm having another meltdown. I also think that playing the go-between for Sam and I is getting on her nerves.  
  
"He's called you four times in the last three hours, you're both being outed in the North Carolina press in less than twenty-four, and it's starting to sound like you're avoiding him is all I'm saying."  
  
"I am avoiding him, Donnatella. I just found out that the Republican Deputy White House Counsel has a thing for him."  
  
"Sam's an attractive guy, Josh. It's not like you haven't noticed yourself." She sits down and helps herself to my fries. "Also, we all thought you knew."  
  
"Sam didn't tell me that he knew, and I'm guessing from the look on his face when you made your little announcement that it wasn't exactly a surprise, so excuse me if…"  
  
"My point there was that pretty much everyone in the building, from the President all the way down to the guy in the mailing room knows, so we all kind of assumed that you knew as well." She pauses to swallow a slice of tomato. "Yes, I appreciate that Sam didn't tell you, and yes… anyway, have you considered the possibility that when Sam didn't tell you he was, perhaps, trying to avoid, well, this?"  
  
"I just found out that the Republican Deputy White House Counsel has a thing for him!" Yes, I do seem to be somewhat stuck on that point. "What the hell am I supposed to say to him?"  
  
"I am not your marriage guidance counsellor, nor am I your mother." Donna stands up. "However, it would be an idea if you two were at least speaking by the time this thing breaks, you do need to read the agriculture report at some point, and Margaret asked me to remind you that Leo wants you to look over the…"  
  
"Commercial industry stats by tomorrow morning, yeah."  
  
I ignore Donna's advice completely. I also ignore the somewhat compelling need to call my mother and tell her that I am, in fact, involved in a sexual relationship with my best friend before she reads about it on the front page of the Washington Post, before she sees the story on CNN, and before she hears about it from her neighbour. Instead, I spend the rest of the day in my office. I read the agriculture report; I look over the commercial industry statistics for Leo, and the only time I see Sam is when the President calls us both into the Oval Office. I manage to avoid looking at or addressing him directly, I manage to be civil, and I hope that the President puts the tension between us during the five minutes and thirty-seven seconds we're in the same room down to stress. I'm out of the room before he is, and I make it back to the Operations bullpen in record time. By ten-thirty, when I'm ready to leave the White House, I realize that I've let the tension reach breaking point, and that once I go home, I can no longer avoid him. The only solution seems to be that I should avoid going home, so I find my spare key to Sam's old apartment, pull out of the parking lot, and, fifteen minutes later, pull onto the curb in front of the apartment building.   
  
I don't even stop to lock the door behind me, and I'm still wearing my jacket and shoes when I bend down to open the fridge. I need a drink right now like a hole in the head, but a large part of my body is crying out for alcohol, so I put a temporary gag on my delicate system and my inner-Donna, and I look for a beer. Unfortunately, in some part of my reptilian brain-stem, I haven't actually considered the fact that neither Sam nor I have spent longer than ten minutes here in the better part of a year, with the sole exception of that one drunken night after the Iowa Caucus when neither of us could actually remember where we lived. My point is that when I open the fridge, I gag. There's a block of cheese with things growing on it that are no longer from this planet, there are two fluffy strawberries, there's a bottle of French dressing with a 2001 expiry date, and there's a chocolate bar. It needs defrosting so badly there's a block of actual ice in the back, encasing a slice of what looks to be lemon but which could equally well be a new life form alien even to Mulder and Scully. I sniff the chocolate dubiously and decide that it's better than nothing. I'm trying to remember exactly why Sam and I didn't clean out his fridge when he moved in with me, when Sam himself opens the kitchen door and I almost pass out right there on the floor.   
  
"What in the name of God are you doing here?" he asks, taking a swing of orange juice straight from the carton and making a face.  
  
"What are you doing here?" I stand up and close the fridge. "And you didn't hear me come in?"  
  
"Actually no." Sam loosens his tie and rubs his left hand across the day old stubble on his chin. "And I got the impression from the way you haven't spoken to me all day that you weren't exactly desperate to see me."  
  
"I wasn't."  
  
"And now?"  
  
"Well, I came here in order to avoid seeing you." I have the vague impression that this isn't perhaps the best thing I could say, but keep talking anyway. "So, I guess I'm still not."  
  
"Is it because of tomorrow?" Sam sounds concerned. "Because you have every right to be scared out of your mind…"  
  
"I'm scared shitless," I mutter. "But then again, I'm sure I'm not the only one, and it's not that that's bothering me so much as the Ainsley thing?"  
  
"The Ainsley thing?" Sam repeats. "This is an issue other than that she's busy outing us in the press and that you don't like her?"  
  
"I don't like her!"  
  
"So the Ainsley thing is that you don't like Ainsley." He looks more and more confused. "Joshua, I'm sorry, but I don't understand. You've been avoiding me all day because you don't like Ainsley? 'Cause I gotta tell you, that really doesn't make a whole lot of sense."  
  
"Ainsley Hayes has a thing for you, Sam, or did you miss that part of the conversation this morning?"  
  
"I heard that part of the conversation fine. I'm just failing to see what your issue is with it, because… it's not like I have a thing for her." His eyes widen. "You think I have a thing for her."  
  
"I think it's not outside of the realm of possibility that you and Ainsley reciprocate each other's feelings."  
  
"Then let's clear up a couple of things. I do not nor have I ever had a thing for Ainsley Hayes. I used to think of her as a friend and I used to think she was an okay person despite her somewhat dubious political leanings but the only feelings I have toward her right now are hatred and anger."  
  
"Yeah, now!"  
  
"Josh." Sam's eyes have gone hard. "Stop talking."  
  
"Are you honestly telling me that you've never thought about…"  
  
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know that I've crossed a line. I have the good sense to duck as soon as I see the lamp flying through the air, but I can't get out of the way of Sam's fist. Thirty seconds ago, we were both yelling. Now he suggests in a cold hiss that I should go. I don't argue with him. I stop long enough to grab my car keys and my backpack, and within a minute I'm downstairs, slamming the car door, and turning the key in the ignition. Sam this angry terrifies me, mostly because I've never seen him like that in my life. Then the full force of what I just did hits me, and my hands are shaking as I switch off the engine and dial Donna's home number from my cellphone. She answers on the first ring.  
  
"Donna? It's me. I think I just did something monumentally stupid."  
  
_________________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
Thank you, firstly to my fridge for being such a disgusting mess last week that I was actually inspired to write about it, which I know is really sad. Secondly to Rhiannon, for providing me with the first half of this plot, and then, when the first three drafts had died a painful death and my frustration was reaching unseen limits, for adding the second half of the plot to it. Thirdly, I don't own Mulder or Scully, they belong to Chris Carter and various alien life forms, but if they're interested in Sam's fridge…  
  
I'm also compelled to add how much I will miss Rob Lowe when he leaves, and to say that for the first time I'm so happy I'm 'across the pond', because we're so damn behind I have a year and a half of Sam left rather than half a season. I really do hope that one of the scenarios on Bartlet4America is fulfilled and that Sam is either moved to White House Counsel or he runs for a Congressional seat in November, but in this universe, he'll be the Deputy Communications Director for as long as Jed stays in office.  
  
Chapter 5 - Of Past Regrets and Future Fears  
  
This is partially written and it has an actual plot, so I absolutely promise it will by no means take as long as this one has, but in the meantime, keep reviewing. 


	5. Of Past Regrets and Future Fears

Chapter 5: Of Past Regrets and Future Fears  
  
  
I'm exhausted. My body is screaming at me to crawl in bed, curl up next to Sam, and sleep for a month. I've spent most of the day trying to figure out a strategy for when this breaks tomorrow morning, and in between times prepping for the Convention, taking a meeting with two junior senators whom I absolutely could not blow off, and expending what little energy I had left thinking of excuses to not go anywhere near Sam's office. My brain, unfortunately, is reminding me that I was just kicked out by my boyfriend and that I won't be getting much sleep anytime between now and November, not to mention the minor problem that I can't see Sam being overly keen on the idea of me curling up next to him right now. It's past midnight by the time I park my car back in its usual spot at the White House and clear security in the Northwest Lobby. Aside from a couple of agents, who don't give me more than a passing glance, the West Wing looks to be pretty much deserted.  
  
When I called Donna, she didn't tell me to go away, she didn't ask me what I had done that was so monumentally stupid, and she didn't even ask if I was drunk. She checked that I was physically all in one piece and that I was okay to handle a moving vehicle, and said she would meet me at work in twenty minutes. When I open my office door, she's already there and there's an actual cup of coffee on the desk.   
  
"You brought me coffee?" I muster a smile in spite of myself. "Is it actually, you know, hot?"  
  
"It's fresh. You sounded like you needed it."  
  
She pushes the mug in my general direction, sits down, and waits for me to start talking. I study the brown liquid with an unusual degree of concentration for a few minutes.  
  
"Sam kicked me out," I blurt finally.  
  
"Out?"  
  
"Out of his apartment," I clarify. "I went there so I wouldn't have to see him, but he was there, and then I said some things I probably shouldn't have said, and then he went kinda crazy on me."  
  
"He was there?"  
  
"Yeah," I mutter, not really listening to Donna but being rather more intent on getting this stuff out. "Said I hadn't seemed all that desperate to talk to him."  
  
"He's got a point. And when you say you 'said some stuff you probably shouldn't have said', we're talking what?"  
  
"I may…"  
  
"Josh, just tell me you didn't accuse him of having an affair with Ainsley Hayes."  
  
"The conversation's something of a blur, but it's certainly not out of the question, and my major problem now is that I've insinuated to Sam that I think he's like his dad." I take a deep, shaky breath and rub my eyes. "Sam's worst fear is that anyone would think that."  
  
"Sam's worst fear is of anything happening to you, but I know what you mean. Do you think he's like that?"  
  
"No!" I'm horrified at the bare suggestion. "I just have, um, insecurity issues, and I got too far out of my depth, and then I said the worst possible thing I could have said?"  
  
"Insecurity issues?" Donna seems almost amused at the concept that my overly-large, novelty sized ego might even think about being insecure.  
  
"Yes. With Sam. And women. And the concept that he might want a more normal life and a relationship that isn't going to be plastered across the gutter press. Also with Laurie and Mal and the fact that he's a very good looking, very sexy guy who gets checked out by women in the street, and it's not totally out of the realm of possibility that he might decide he could do better than me."  
  
"And that's why you thought he had a thing for Ainsley Hayes?"  
  
"Do you know for a fact that he doesn't?"  
  
"You said…"  
  
"I said I didn't think he was having a thing with Ainsley, which is very different."  
  
Donna puts her feet on the floor, sits up, and gets that look on her face where I just know she's about to give me a lecture.  
  
"Sam has been involved with you for more than two years. He sat there in that office while you were in that OR and while none of us were sure you were ever going to leave it alive, and he told me that he had been in love with you since he was in college and that he owed you everything, and then I told him that life was too damn short. Then, six months and six days later, we sat in your office and he told me that he loved you and if anything happened he would never forgive himself, and not one word I could say was going to convince him that it wasn't his fault. And he met us at GW and held your hand the whole time they were stitching you up, and he could have cared less what that intern thought."  
  
I nod dumbly.  
  
"He would fall on his sword for you before he would fall on his sword for the President is my point. He'll bring you coffee and he'll monitor your alcohol intake. You'll hear his voice when everyone else sounds like sirens, and you'll have a whole conversation with him using just your eyes." Donna shrugs. "He would've taken that bullet for you, Josh, and all of that is how I know that he does not reciprocate whatever the hell it is Ainsley Hayes feels for him."  
  
I'm silent. Also moved beyond words, though I make a valiant attempt to not show it. I wonder briefly whether it's that obvious to everyone, and then decide that I don't care if it is. And then panic sets in again as I wonder exactly how much I screwed up tonight. Which is another way of saying that I wonder whether, no matter how much I believe that what Donna says is true, I might have been such a jackass tonight that when Sam kicked me out of the apartment it was for good.  
  
"For God's sake, Josh, he hasn't finished with you!"  
  
"How do you do that?" I come out of my silence as I wonder exactly where Donna honed her ESP skills.   
  
"How do I do what?"  
  
"That thing where you know what I'm gonna ask you."  
  
"I'm a woman, Josh, women know everything."  
  
"Women do not…"  
  
"Hey!" She points a pencil at me, the sharp end aimed at worrying proximity to my eyes. "I've been nice to you tonight. I came into the office at midnight on a Friday, I was nice to you, I made you coffee, and I did the substitute-mother thing. Four acts of compassion, none of which are in my job description. So the least you could do is not mock the Sisterhood is all I'm saying."  
  
"Okay, okay." I hold my hands up and admit surrender.  
  
"And you still need to call your real mother."  
  
"What for again?" I vaguely remember this cropping up in a conversation this afternoon, but I'm not at all sure why I was meant to call her.  
  
"To tell her that you're sleeping with your best friend before she reads it in the New York Times."  
  
"Yeah. That." I remember something from a few minutes a go. "Hey, Donna? How do you know that he hasn't finished with me?"  
  
"Because I do." She rolls her eyes as though only person of educational subnormality wouldn't already know the answer to the question. "Because it's you and Sam. Because he's absolutely head over heels in love with you… I thought we covered all that already."  
  
"We did. Strictly speaking, we did. But that was a really awful thing I said to him."  
  
"Yeah," she concedes. "It was."  
  
"And…"  
  
"And Sam is doubtless really pissed at you right now, but he'll get over it, exactly the same way you would if he pissed you off. Buy him some flowers."  
  
I make a face and question her judgement in the gift department.   
  
"Then coffee. Or something. And apologise to him."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"You should go home."  
  
"Nah."  
  
"Josh…"  
  
"I have to be back here in five hours."  
  
"You live ten minutes away!" Donna's beginning to look frustrated at my lack of cooperation. "Go home, get some sleep."  
  
"I just don't want to go home to an empty apartment, okay? I don't want to go to bed and try to sleep and him not be there." And I know how cheesy and adolescent that sounds, but I can't help it. "I'm gonna borrow Toby's couch for a few hours."  
  
"You're sleeping here?"  
  
"It's not like I haven't done it before."  
  
"Yeah, but that's usually because you're drunk, or, you know, about to be fired, or something equally calamitous. And you usually end up passed out snoring on the floor and smelling like a Dumpster."  
  
"Well, tonight I'm going to end up passed out in Toby's office and not smelling like a Dumpster, and this, I would remind you, was pretty calamitous." I jerk my head in the general direction of the door. "You go home."  
  
"You're gonna be okay?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
We leave the office together, and I go the long way round to the Communications bullpen, via the lobby. I tell Donna to get some sleep and I'll see her in the morning, to which she replies that it's already morning. When I get to Toby's office, I dispense of my shoes, my jacket, and my tie, and I lay down on the couch. It's a little short for a six-foot tall man, but I'm too exhausted to care at this point. I stay awake for long enough to see on the clock radio that it's 2:16am, and I'm asleep within forty-five seconds. I don't move until five-thirty, when I'm rudely shaken awake by a hand belonging to a person who most definitely was not here when I went to sleep.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Thanks to Rhiannon for correcting my grammar, my sentence structure, and for helping me to sit on what I call my innerGiles - the annoying part of my muse that makes me write things that would sound more appropriate coming out of a Gileslike Watcher with a British flag up his ass, and that phrase does not belong to me but to Joss Whedon, 20th Century Fox, the 'argh' guy, and whoever wrote 'Revelations'. I digress.  
  
Chapter 6 will be up soon - I don't know how soon, but I'm determined I'll have finished at least one more chapter by the time I go back to school, so September 3rd at the absolute latest. A warning would be to bring a pillow and a blanket and copious amounts of caffeine, because this one's going to be long. 


	6. A President's Demons and His Better Ange...

Chapter 6: A President's Demons and His Better Angels  
  
  
I can feel myself being rudely shaken awake. I can also feel myself being intermittently poked by some kind of sharp object. I have a headache and probably a bruise the size of a nickel on my left shoulder. Finally, I open my eyes and squint at a blurry apparition in the form of Leo McGarry. Wait, no, that is actually Leo. He's not doing a very good job of staying in focus, but has taken it upon himself to wake me up and he's not being gentle about it. Things are slowly becoming less fuzzy, and I find myself staring at Toby's floor. I sit up, more from a healthy sense of self-preservation in the hope that he'll stop trying to rouse me using brutal force if I actually show some signs of being conscious than from any desperate need to be vertical.  
  
"Ow." I rub my arm, shove my feet into my shoes, and glare at my boss.  
  
"What are you doing here?"  
  
"I'm sleeping. Correction, I was sleeping until you decided to try out ancient methods of torture on me at…" I look over at Toby's clock. "Five forty-five on a Saturday morning. Leo? Why are you even in the office?"  
  
"I've got some work to do." He waves a hand vaguely. "You still haven't answered my question."  
  
"I was sorta hoping you wouldn't notice that."  
  
I leave Toby's office, loop round the newspaper rack in the bullpen, and go into Sam's office where I borrow two Tylenol and a glass of water from his desk. Leo's followed me and closed the door, and has now sat himself down and is looking at me expectantly.  
  
"Leo, exactly how much do you want to be involved in my love life?" I sit on the end of the desk and watch him turn an interesting shade of purple.  
  
"Let's assume that the less I'm involved in your love life the happier I will be."  
  
"Then let's also assume that you really, really don't want to know why I spent the night in the office."  
  
"Let's assume that." He looks relieved that I didn't get into details. "You need to call…"  
  
"My mom, yes, I know."  
  
"Senior staff at eight-thirty," he reminds me as he heads off in the direction of his office. "You might want to avoid reporters until after CJ's briefing."  
  
"I'm entirely comfortable with avoiding reporters until well after that, Leo, but whatever you say."  
  
I leave the bullpen and cut past the Roosevelt Room to my office, going via Donna's desk so that I can look for my mother's phone number. I've got a couple of hours to kill, and she's usually awake at 6am anyway, so I can do what I've been putting off for the last two weeks and talk to her before this thing hits the wires. I finally stumble across her cell phone number, more by accident than design, filed under J and written on a piece of paper with a yellow sticky note stuck to it. I give up on locating the landline number and hope that she'll have her cell switched on, and I sit down at my desk to make the call. The phone rings twice, and I hear scuffles, a bump, and some muttered cursing before her voice comes on the line.   
  
"Hey, Mom."  
  
"Josh?" I can hear her moving around. "Why in the name of God are you calling me at 3am?"  
  
Oops. I search my desk for the yellow sticky note, which I've peeled off and ignored, and find it stuck to my shoe. I squint at Donna's barely legible handwriting and make out something that looks like Sn Francsquiggle, then vaguely remember a conversation some weeks ago when my mom mentioned that she would be going out to San Francisco to stay with a friend of hers.   
  
"You're in California."  
  
"You didn't get my message?" She sounds surprised, knowing as well as I do that Donna still hasn't got a message wrong in the four and a half years she's been my assistant. "I spoke to Donna…"  
  
"She probably told me. She also wrote it down and stuck it to your cell number, but I still have to learn that I should probably read Donna's notes. Do you want me to call you back?" I ask contritely.  
  
"God, no. You've woken me up now. What was it you were wanting to talk about?"  
  
"Ah."  
  
My mouth is suddenly very dry. Please understand here that my mother is a liberal Democrat from a very long line of liberal Democrats. She met my dad at a pro-choice rally in the forties. They took me to a civil rights march when I was six. She called every single Republican she knew to gloat when then-Governor Bartlet won the 1998 Presidential election. And when she read in the Washington Post that the President had stuck the Marriage Recognition Act in a drawer, she called me and ranted for a solid forty minutes about exactly how much he should have vetoed it. And when she got no joy from me - I had been dating Sam for six months at that point, even though I had spent half of that time being practically held under house arrest by Donna, and was having to work very hard to not appear too fired up about gay rights - she rang Leo and yelled at him. Unfortunately, being a gay rights supporter is a lot different from having a bisexual son, and I'm suddenly not all that sure how to say this.  
  
"Mom… okay…" Oh, God. "There's going to be a story on the news for, I imagine, most of the day and probably in the papers tomorrow, and I didn't want you to find out from the New York Times or CNN or NPR or Mrs Bradshaw, for that matter." Mrs Bradshaw, my mom's very Republican neighbour who I met when I went out to Florida last Thanksgiving and who talked loudly about MS and how Governor Ritchie was going to be the best thing ever to happen to America. "And I thought you should…"  
  
"Josh, you're rambling."  
  
"I know."  
  
"What's going to be in the papers?"  
  
"It's, ah… it's about me and Sam." I take a deep breath. "Sam and I have been - are - involved. For two and a bit years."  
  
"Involved how?"  
  
I'm going to kill her. The woman is not dense. She knows exactly what I mean by involved. She just loves to imagine me squirming. I absolutely refuse to describe my relationship with Sam as romantic. Because it's not. Hence my utter horror when Donna suggested I bring him flowers. And I'm a little bit squicky about describing it as sexual, just 'cause I'm a little bit squicky about using the word 'sexual' in a conversation with my mom. So I come out with possibly the lamest sentence ever to escape my mouth.  
  
"Involved like he's my boyfriend involved."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
I blink.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
Half an hour later, I'm still on the phone. My role in this conversation has been reduced to grunts, nods, and the occasional 'uh-huh' when she pauses for breath. So far, I've been called 'idiot boy' six times, I've been admonished for keeping my sexuality a secret from my parents for twenty-six years, I've been informed none too pleasantly that my mom couldn't care less who I'm sleeping with so long as I'm treating them right and it's not Mandy, and I'm currently being lambasted for hiding what she insists on calling her son-in-law for the last two years.  
  
"You've got senior staff in an hour," Donna announces, breezing into the office. "You should probably get changed before that. Who are you on the phone to?"  
  
"Mom, I have to go." I butt into the middle of a sentence. "I… yeah, I'll talk to him… and I'll call you tonight… uh-huh." I hang up and turn my attention to Donna. "Staff isn't until eight-thirty."  
  
"Leo bumped it up to eight."  
  
"'Kay." I scoot out from behind my desk and follow her out the door. "Is Sam in yet?"  
  
"Don't know, Josh, I'm not his keeper. How'd your mom take it?"  
  
"She was pretty pissed at the wake-up call."  
  
"Yeah, well, it's three-fifty in the morning in San Francisco."  
  
"I just got my head round her not being in Connecticut, Donna. She had to complicate things by taking a vacation?"  
  
"You're the third most powerful man in the country and you can't read a bright yellow note when it's put in front of your face?"  
  
"You're the senior assistant to the third most powerful man in the country and you file my mother's phone number under the letter J. Not to mention, I still can't read your alleged distinctive penmanship."  
  
"The J would stand for Josh's Mom." She conveniently ignores my jibe about her handwriting. "Besides being woken up by her idiot son in the middle of the night, how'd she take it?"  
  
"She called me idiot boy a few times and made me promise to take Sam down there for Thanksgiving." I grab Bonnie as she walks past us. "Is Sam in?"  
  
"Ten minutes ago."  
  
"Thanks." I run a hand through my hair, making it stand even more on end than it already does. "I have to go out for a few minutes."  
  
"Looking like that?" Donna stares at me.  
  
"Sure."  
  
"You're getting changed before Staff!" she yells after me.  
  
"Donna, I'm running across the street. I'll be five minutes. It's very, very early Saturday morning and anybody with any sense is still in bed. Who am I going to see?"  
  
The answer to that question, in case you're interested, is Danny Concannon, who joins me in the queue at Starbucks with no warning.  
  
"So, what's the deal with you and Sam?"  
  
I jump five feet in the air. "I'm so not answering that question."  
  
"Come on, Josh. I was a nice guy. I could've had that story in the Post this morning, but I held off and I gave you guys a heads up."  
  
"You wouldn't have done it for this morning's paper anyway," I note. "Tall cappuccino with extra foam. One, you're too good to write a story based on something given to you by a right-wing rag whose reputation is murky at best. Two, you would never do something like this without having it confirmed, which I would remind you we haven't done, by the White House. Three, you write about it on a Saturday then you lose the story 'cause nobody reads the paper on a Saturday, but if you wait until Sunday then you have the scoop because everyone reads the paper on a Sunday and more people read the Washington Post than read the Dallas Morning News. Four, you're a nice guy."  
  
"You've been hanging round CJ too long."  
  
I collect the coffee, add sugar, and leave with Danny still tailing me.  
  
"Are you going to confirm it?"  
  
"Nope."  
  
"Off the record?"  
  
"Danny, you're not gonna come close to getting a quote from me."  
  
"Fine."   
  
Danny can be stubborn but he knows when to back off, and he leaves me in the lobby as I'm about to turn off to Communications. I arrive at Sam's office to see him typing furiously as I knock on the door.  
  
"Hey."  
  
"Hi." He pulls his glasses off and looks up from the computer, remarking caustically, "You look like you slept in that."  
  
"I did, more or less," I mutter, sitting down. "I slept on Toby's couch."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"I talked to Danny."  
  
"What did he want?"  
  
"He spent five minutes fishing for a quote."  
  
"What's that?" He nods at the Starbucks container in my hand, and I can't believe how uncomfortable this conversation is.   
  
"Peace offering." I hold it out to him. "I'm sorry about last night, I was an idiot…"  
  
He takes the coffee and waves the apology off. "You don't have to say it."   
  
"Yeah, I do." I look at my shoes. "I was an idiot. I never should have said what I said, I never meant to say it, and the only reason I did say it was because I have a not entirely irrational phobia that someday in that not too distant future, you'll wake up an realize that you're wasting your life on a rapidly balding 42 year old political pitbull with an ego the size of Montana and no tact, when frankly, you could do a hell of a lot better than me."  
  
"Doesn't mean I want to," he replies. "I gather from your utter mortification and the way you broke the sprint record getting out of the apartment last night that you realized why what you said hit me in the gut like a sack of potatoes."  
  
"I did and I'm sorry."  
  
"It's just that there are some things you're sure of, and I didn't want you to think that I was something you couldn't be sure of."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Think we can kiss and make up?"  
  
I'm busy taking Sam's request literally when CJ appears in the door, waving her cell phone and looking agitated. She stops dead when she sees us and addresses a point above our heads.  
  
"Okay. I know we said we were all fine with this, but that does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that the entire bullpen wants to watch you making out."  
  
I step back in a hurry. CJ has a way of sneaking up on people without them noticing. I'm straightening myself up as much as a person can possibly straighten a slept-in suit when Sam notices the phone in her hand.  
  
"What's going on?"  
  
"Oh." She remembers why she was looking for us to begin with. "Looks like Toby's hunch was right."  
  
"What hunch?"  
  
"Ainsley's little elves."  
  
"Huh?" CJ is making very little sense to me right now.   
  
"Your favourite Christian Right spokeswoman…"  
  
"Her God is still being indicted for tax fraud," I mutter belligerently.   
  
"She's on Newsweek today."  
  
"Doing what?" I demand.  
  
"Talking about you two."  
  
"Talking about…" Sam's brain seems to be processing information about as well as mine is.   
  
"I have to brief Leo before Senior Staff, I just thought you should know." She looks at me a little more closely. "Also, Josh, you should change. You're wrinkled and you smell."  
  
"Thanks," I call after her rapidly retreating back as she disappears in the direction of Leo's office.  
  
"Sam, Staff in five minutes." Ginger pokes her head in the door. "Josh, that's you too."  
  
"Yeah, I'm going back to my office and changing my clothes because I've just been informed that I'm wrinkled and I smell."  
  
"Yeah, and your suit looks like you slept in it," Ginger agrees. "I'll tell Donna you're on your way back."  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
Donna began keeping a clean suit, a pair of jeans, and a razor in my office after that small incident which we don't talk about anymore but which involved me, Joey, and Sam's wet weather gear. The result of this is that when I show up in senior staff fifteen minutes later, I'm clean, shaved, as uncrumpled as anyone ever sees me, and nagged to death, something that prompted me to tell Donna that I really thought a nice byproduct of dating a guy would be that I would escape the nagging which seems to inevitably ensue whenever a person gets involved with a woman. She told me I must be kidding and kicked me out of the office, that particular argument having made me ten minutes late, a fact which Leo doesn't hesitate to point out when I sit down. I offer up my excuse.   
  
"People were telling me that I smelled funny." I'm not letting go of that one anytime soon.  
  
"Okay." Leo and Toby both give me funny looks. "CJ, you were saying?"  
  
"The Newsweek producers want to know if, and I quote, the White House has any response to the allegations that Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Lyman and Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn are involved in a homosexual relationship as made by Christian Right spokeswoman Mary Marsh, who will be appearing on the show at noon today to discuss these allegations."  
  
"What did you tell them?"  
  
"I told them no, but you can bet your ass they'll be watching the briefing."  
  
"Did you also tell them that most intellectual, or even non-intellectual, national television shows make passing fourth-grade English a requirement for being on their staff?"  
  
CJ ignores Toby's dig at the English language and turns her attention to Sam.  
  
"What if nobody says anything at the briefing?" Sam asks. "Do we just come out and make the statement anyway?"  
  
"Absolutely not." Leo looks horrified. "We're not volunteering any information."  
  
"Somebody will ask though," I assure them. "Danny was following me round at seven o'clock this morning looking for a quote. He didn't get one!" I exclaim defensively, noting the 'oh, God' looks on the four faces in the room. "Exactly how inept do you lot think I am around reporters?"  
  
"I don't know, Josh." Toby scratches his beard. "But while I think about it, can you tell me a little bit more about the President's secret plan to fight inflation?"  
  
"That was a long time ago."  
  
"Shut up, both of you." Leo seems to be regretting that he ever hired any of us. "CJ, you will do the briefing. You will give them the itinerary for the Convention, you will tell them anything else they need to know about anything else, and then if somebody asks about this you will tell them the truth."  
  
"You idiot!"  
  
Bit of a comedown from the cutest butt in professional politics. Joey storms unceremoniously into Leo's office, followed by Kenny and insulting me in her own voice.   
  
"It took you twenty-four hours to get here from LA?"  
  
"I was schmoozing California Democrats. I was untangling the mess somebody made at the California campaign office. I was putting together a poll to see exactly how many undecided's you've managed to ostracise. And it takes a commercial jet six hours to fly from LA to Washington."  
  
"How come none of this is Sam's fault?" That particular rant was very much directed at me. " Come to think of it, how come any of this is either of our faults?"  
  
"Well, actually…" Toby attempts to interrupt.  
  
"You know what I mean."  
  
"I don't know," Kenny translates, as Joey reverts to sign language. "But I'm almost positive I'll be able to find some way to blame it on you."  
  
"Thanks for that stellar display of comradeship you just displayed there."  
  
"Joey." Leo butts in. "You've got a poll you can put in the field?"  
  
She nods.  
  
"Do it starting after the briefing and have numbers you can show us by the end of tomorrow. Are your people going to have a problem working through the weekend?"  
  
"It's not a problem."  
  
"Good, 'cause they don't have a choice."  
  
"Have you got anything more on Ainsley?" she asks.  
  
"She's in North Carolina with her family for the weekend." Leo shrugs. "Short of yanking her back, there's nothing we can do from that angle until Monday morning."  
  
"What happens on Monday?"  
  
"She's meeting with me at 8am."  
  
"Sam, Josh." CJ's been looking over some stuff, but she raises her head and joins the conversation again. "My briefing is at eleven, you've got between now and then to tell anyone who needs to know and who you don't want to get the story through the mass media. I'll be surprised if something isn't leaking through the Internet already, and I flat-out guarantee you that it's on the networks by eleven-thirty. After that, we've got the Mary Marsh thing…"  
  
Sam fills Joey in on the Mary Marsh thing and we leave it. We can't do anything about that until we've seen the interview. We're winding down when I sum the morning up.  
  
"So, what we're left with are the senior staffers who are coming out of the closet, the Christian Right, America still expecting us to run it, and the President's still got MS."  
  
"What you said." Leo gives us all a long, hard look. "Sounds like a pretty light day."  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
"Good morning."  
  
I parked myself, along with what looks like half of the White House staff, in front of the TV above Bonnie and Ginger's desks at 10:57. CJ walks into the press room at eleven on the nose. She doesn't even get to the podium.  
  
"CJ…"  
  
"It's a light day, Steve, let me get through this and then I'll take a couple questions. As you all know, the advance team for the Convention went ahead to the Convention Center in New York on Thursday. The rest of us are scheduled to leave on Air Force One at eight tomorrow evening, absolutely no delays, which means we should be leaving around ten. You all know the drill for next week. I'll remind you that the President's main speech is on Thursday night, but on Wednesday he'll be introducing his running mate."  
  
"Is it going to be Hoynes?"  
  
"We're not telling you who it is, Katie, but as Vice-President Hoynes has been running against President Bartlet for the Democratic nomination, you can safely gamble your entire bank balance on him not being added to the ticket this year." She riffles through her notes. "We'll be returning 3am Friday, and if anyone has any complaints about the take-off time, don't look at me."  
  
"CJ?"  
  
"But of course you will anyway. Chris?"  
  
"Why are we leaving New York at three in the morning?"  
  
"The party might run over and the President likes flying at night. Seriously, guys, we've been here three and a half years, you'd think you would be used to it by now. We're done. Questions?"  
  
The tension in the bullpen can probably be sensed by everyone within a five mile radius. The President and Abbey slip in as reporters' hands go up, and he motions us to keep our seats. I'm busy crushing Sam's hand.  
  
"Danny?"  
  
"CJ, has the President read the North Carolina conservative newspaper the Raleigh Tribune this morning?"  
  
"On any normal day, the President reads the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the New Hampshire Daily Herald, but I haven't spoken to him this morning, so I wouldn't know. Will?"  
  
"Sorry, I have to follow up on that," Danny interrupts. "Is the President aware of an article appearing in this paper alleging a homosexual relationship between Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn?"  
  
"Yes, he is. Will?"  
  
"Does the President or the White House have any response to the article?"  
  
"You'll have to be a bit more specific than that. What kind of response?"  
  
"Well, to begin with, is it true?"  
  
"The relationship itself is true, but if you're asking whether the White House, or President Bartlet personally, agrees with the Raleigh Tribune's characterisation of this relationship and of homosexuality in general, then the answer to both is no."  
  
"CJ…"  
  
"Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn have known each other for over fifteen years. To give you a bit of background, they met in 1988 when they were both working as congressional aides in Washington, and they've been good friends ever since. They became involved sexually following the assassination attempt in Rosslyn, Virginia in May 2000, but chose until recently to keep their private life private. Their closest friends and family, including the White House senior staff members and the First Family, have been made aware of the relationship over the course of the last several weeks. President and Dr Bartlet also give their full support to Josh and Sam."  
  
"CJ, why was this leaked to the Raleigh Tribune?"  
  
"We're not releasing that information right now, I'll have more for you on it by Monday."  
  
"What about Josh's relationship with Donna Moss?"  
  
Back in Communications, I turn puce. So does Sam. So does Donna. All three of us are about an inch from decking the TV. Onscreen, CJ grins.  
  
"What about Josh's relationship with Donna Moss?"  
  
"CJ."  
  
"Seriously, Arthur, what do you want from me? Donna is Josh's assistant. She keeps him alive, on time, and makes sure that the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff doesn't collapse entirely. They're very good friends."  
  
I'm almost blown away by the sheer cheek of it.  
  
"How long have Josh and Sam been gay?"  
  
"Well, first of all, neither of them are gay, they're bisexual, as if any of us who were on the campaign trail are ever going to be able to forget the disaster that was Josh and Mandy, but to answer your question, I imagine since they were born."  
  
And there's the soundbyte.  
  
"That's it, guys, I'll be back at three."  
  
She collects her file, pulls off her glasses, and leaves. When she goes straight past her office and round the corner into Communications, she gets a round of applause. Sam and I are out. We'll be the lead story at every news bulletin until Wednesday night, when one would hope the press are going to get more interested in who we're bringing onto the ticket as the nominee for the Vice Presidency. Our privacy's going to be gone like snow in spring. And a hell of a lot of people are going to hate us for this. But if we wanted outing, CJ's done it for us in style.  
  
Unfortunately, if Sam and I had a hard time restraining ourselves during the briefing, CJ, Toby, Leo, Joey, Donna, and the President, who's joined us in Leo's office, have to practically tie us down during Newsweek to stop us from throwing things. It starts off fairly innocuously; with Mark Gottfried making the self-evident point that in the last half-hour the White House has confirmed allegations blah blah blah. Then he introduces Mary Marsh. And I guess that's pretty much when the wheels fall off the wagon.  
  
"Ms Marsh, you are senior spokeswoman for the Christian Right group Preservation of American Traditions and Values. What is your reaction to this news so recently confirmed by the White House?"  
  
"I think that it's outrageous that we're allowing people like this to operate at the highest levels of government. This country was founded on Christian values…"  
  
I'm trying, and failing, to remember where exactly in the Declaration of Independence anybody specifically mentioned or referred to the Bible, but she keeps right on going without bothering to check her facts.  
  
"…and it states clearly in the Bible that homosexuality is an abomination. I can tell you, Mark, that by this evidence Mr Lyman and Mr Seaborn don't believe in any God I pray to…"  
  
There's a chorus of voices around me, and I turn bright red as every single person in the room says loudly and belligerently, "Lady, the God you pray to is too busy being indicted for tax fraud."  
  
"…but as we are so often reminded, President Bartlet is a good Catholic man with a strong sense of family values, and I think on faith alone, as well as for the good of American society, there is no question that he should ask for their resignations to be effective immediately."  
  
"That's an interesting point, Mary."  
  
"Interesting point, my ass," Sam mutters.  
  
"I also have here with me Congressman Matthew Skinner, Republican of Nebraska. Congressman, what's your take on this?"  
  
"First of all, I think we should recognize that the President is under no legal obligation to fire Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn, and that if he did so and claimed religious reasons, not only would the worst fears of every non-Catholic who voted for him be realized, he would be breaking that United States law which clearly recognizes separation of Church and State."  
  
"But personally, what do you think of it?"  
  
"Personally, my opinion is that neither of them have done anything wrong, that their business is their business, and that they should be left alone to get on with their lives."  
  
"Congressman Skinner." Mary Marsh rears her head again. "How can you claim to be a Republican?"  
  
"I am a Republican, and I can claim to be one because I agree with 95% of the Party's platform. I do not agree with their stance on gay rights. Ms Marsh, I don't agree with you that homosexuality is an abomination. I'm a Christian, but I'm also gay and I don't believe that I'm going to burn in purgatory until the end of time because of that."  
  
"The Bible…"  
  
"The Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination punishable by death, and, as I'll remind you that Mr Lyman is Jewish, so does the Torah. They both say that a woman can be killed for committing adultery, and the Torah tells us that a rebellious child can be stoned to death at the city gates, and for all I know those writings reflect the best wisdom of their times, but they were written in different millennia. By any modern standard, it's just wrong. This country was not founded on the Bible, it was founded because the Founding Fathers and the Pilgrims no longer wanted to be dictated to, and when it began on the commons in Concord, Massachusetts, America was founded on the belief that all men are created equal, not that all straight men are created equal."  
  
"We'll leave you with that thought," Mark announces, interrupting the catfight for the first time. "Let's take a break, and we'll be back after this."  
  
CJ clicks off the TV as the screen fades to the commercial break and we all sit there in dumb silence. Not only do I want to wring Mary Marsh's neck, I'm now stuck trying to get my head round the fact that Matt Skinner - who had a screaming match with me not two hundred yards from where I'm sitting over the Marriage Recognition Act - just came to our defence on national television. A phone rings outside and shatters the quiet.  
  
Pandemonium breaks loose.   
  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Anything that is technically accurate in this chapter has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the people who point out the especially big mistakes before I have a chance to make a complete ass of myself in front of, well, the world. So, the people who are responsible for there not being a huge geographical snafu in the form of, well, let's just say I wasn't sure of the relative position of Washington to Florida; ABS from whom I stole the title and to whom I've instructed Josh and Sam (and everyone else) to send their therapy bills once I finally let them go; Krista, who gave me a two-minute crash course in which states would be more likely to elect gay men to Congress and therefore which state Congressman Skinner could feasibly represent; Ron Nyswaner and Denzel Washington, for giving me the line 'all men are created equal, not all straight men are created equal' when I watched Philadelphia last month. And, as always, to Rhiannon. For not dying when I dropped a 6,000 word chapter on her, and for putting up with more than... any beta-reader should have to, ever.   
  
Chapter 7: For Old Friends Of Their Fathers... coming very soon. 


	7. For Old Friends of Their Fathers

Chapter 7: For Old Friends Of Their Fathers  
  
  
Sam and I were finally kicked out of the office at almost eleven last night, when Leo threatened to revoke our security clearance if we so much as came within smelling distance of the White House in the next twelve hours. We went home, locked the door behind us, and went to bed and to sleep, pointedly ignoring the twenty-seven or so messages on the machine as well as the television and all other forms of mass communication that had the potential to make our lives a living hell.  
  
Unfortunately, it's Sunday morning now, and the phone is kindly doing its best to drag me out of the depths of the longest uninterrupted sleep I've had possibly since college. I peel my eyes open, squint at caller ID, and recognize the number, which prompts me to pick the receiver up and put it straight back down. It gives me maybe an eight second respite before it resumes ringing. My mother is nothing if not persistent. I answer it and bring it to my ear in wary anticipation of the lambasting I'm pretty sure its about to receive.  
  
"You never called me last night."   
  
"Good morning, Josh, is a pretty good way to start the day, mom."  
  
"Don't get cute with your mother, Joshua."  
  
I make an inarticulate sound.  
  
"Is Sam there?"  
  
"That sort of depends on how you define 'there'."  
  
"May I speak to him?"  
  
Sam currently has his head buried in the pillow and, now I'm awake, I'm wondering how I could possibly have slept through the snoring. I lay the phone down and kick him in the knee. Violent, quite possibly. Effective, definitely. Once he's asleep, you could march the entire Salvation Army past the bed and he wouldn't notice. I have evidence to prove it, too. Once, fairly late on on the '98 campaign trail, we were stuck in yet another in a long line of godawful motels, in North Dakota, of all places. Sam and I had been roommates pretty much the whole campaign - and can I just say here how incredibly bad it is to have to spend nine months sharing a room with a guy for whom you have these huge, lustful, irresolvable feelings - but in this particular motel, we managed to somehow wangle two rooms between the two of us. My point being that, when a fire alarm went off at two in the morning, my boyfriend who was not my boyfriend at that point managed to sleep through it. I digress into a big pit. Anyway, so, I kick him in the knee. He wakes up with a yell and a retaliatory kick.   
  
"My mom's on the phone," I mutter, curling back up and closing my eyes.   
  
"Ouch."   
  
I can feel him glaring at me as he leans over to get the phone.  
  
"Elana?"  
  
I roll over and look at the clock, almost strangling myself with the phone cord in the process. 10am.  
  
"He's holding up."  
  
I love how they talk to me instead of about me.  
  
"He spent the afternoon cheering Matt Skinner and sticking pins into a picture of Mary Marsh."  
  
When Donna asked me how psycho I actually was, I informed her petulantly that it made me feel better.  
  
"Yeah. Neither of us have read the papers this morning, but once we do…"  
  
He trails off uncertainly. I had conveniently forgotten about the existence of the print media, and I start idly wondering about the number of people whose permission I would have to get before I could revoke the 'freedom of the press' clause from the Bill of Rights. Leaving Sam to talk to my mom, I duck out from under the phone cord and go to make coffee and collect the papers from the front door, and when I return ten minutes later, I've managed to ascertain one thing from my very brief glance over the headlines. In the ten hours between the end of Newsweek and the print deadline yesterday, the shit hit the fan. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe all deem us big enough news that they've all designated us a three-inch banner headline on the front page, above the fold. I manage to put the three papers and the two cups of coffee down without spilling anything, and then I crawl back into bed at the same time as Sam finally gets off the phone.  
  
"We're going to Florida for Thanksgiving."  
  
"She asked you?" I give him a sheepish look. "I was kind of supposed to yesterday, but…"  
  
"You had some stuff on your mind."  
  
"We might not have jobs by Thanksgiving."  
  
"You don't really believe that."  
  
"Neither do you, and you were more pissed at him than the rest of us all put together."  
  
"He was my Real Thing, and he still is, now more than ever, but… yes, then, I was pissed, and it's just that there are some things you're sure of…" His voice falters and I end the sentence for him.  
  
"Like longitude and latitude."  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
We finally arrive in the West Wing at 2:04pm. It took us over an hour to get round to reading the papers to begin with, an activity which, once we did eventually begin it, was prolonged somewhat by my need to verbally assassinate every individual member of the Fourth Estate and the Republican Party, almost all of whom have been far too free with phrases like 'morally reprehensible'. Except for Matt Skinner, who is still my personal deity, and Danny Concannon, who… well, let's just say that if public opinion is dictated by the press, the nose count in our favour now includes pretty well everyone who reads the Washington Post, and even if I am pissed at the rest of the world, I'm somewhat reassured by the fact that at least some people seem to be on our side. My 'pissed but somewhat reassured' mood regresses rapidly to just plain pissed when I walk into CJ's office and she makes her announcement.  
  
"FOX News and the Washington Times are calling it Homogate."  
  
I open and close my mouth a few times and probably turn a few interesting shades of red. CJ manages to get out of the way before I explode. An explosion which, when it comes, is not pretty. It involves screaming and me coming about two inches from putting my hand through another plate glass window. Eventually, I talk myself pretty much to a standstill. I run my hands through my hair and slump down in my chair.  
  
"Sam and I have been together for over two years, and in that time we've been to the seventh circle of hell and back more than once. And after all of that, it's degrading, not to mention more than a little ridiculous, to have become tabloid fodder and Republican firing targets."  
  
"Yeah." She nods and sits back down, and holds out her copy of the Washington Times.  
  
Not really.  
  
"Sure." But despite 'not really', I have some form of weird compulsion to read what people are saying about us, no matter how convoluted. "I'm just gonna…"  
  
"Go."   
  
She waves me off and I head down the short stretch of hallway between her office and my end of the bullpen. It's busier than usual for a Sunday afternoon, both with people handling the fallout from yesterday and people preparing for the flight to New York in five and a half hours. I run into Donna at the coffee pot.   
  
"You have a call to return to Ann Stark."  
  
"I do?" I blink. Ann Stark and I generally go out of our way to avoid each other. "Can you pass it off to Toby?"  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because…" I try to think of something that won't make me sound like a chicken. "Because I get hostile around Ann Stark, and then I end up either yelling at her or making fun of her, and either way it doesn't end up working out for me. And then there's the fact that Toby's under the, albeit highly misguided, impression that she's his friend."  
  
"She's really not."  
  
"No," I agree.  
  
"She's the Chief of Staff for the Senate Majority Leader."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And I'm saying that Ann Stark is a Republican and Toby is, well, really incredibly not."  
  
"Nonetheless. I know that, and you know that, and probably the Leadership knows that, but Toby doesn't seem to, is my point."  
  
"You're meeting with the President tonight on Air Force One." Donna moves off the subject of Toby's lack of insight onto other things. "Tell Sam."  
  
"When did that get on the schedule?"  
  
"When Charlie said that the President wanted to meet with the two of you on Air Force One."   
  
"Donna, have you ever been strapped down on an airplane next to the President?"  
  
"No," she admits. "But then again, I'm an assistant, and he's, you know, the President, so I have to say I'm not entirely sure where you're going with that."  
  
"We're going to the place where I tell you that the man is commonly known, by Republicans, Democrats and foreign dignitaries alike, as the Airplane Passenger From Hell."  
  
"He talks?"  
  
"About yams and red tape and icebergs, and it's not like out of the realm of possibility that he would maybe do it in Latin. You gotta ask CJ about the fjords sometime."  
  
"Remind me to never sit next to the President on a plane." She follows me into my office as I sit down and start going through the pile of crap that has, somehow, accumulated on my desk in the last fifteen hours. "Leo wants to see you."  
  
"Now?"  
  
"He said when you got in."  
  
"I've been in for a half hour, you couldn't maybe have told me before I sat down?"  
  
"That's less entertaining for me."  
  
I roll my eyes, relinquish my seat, and leave the room about a minute and a half after having entered it. I cut through the lobby to Leo's office, narrowly avoiding a group of tourists and running straight into Ginger. I arrive at the door of the outer office to hear the thirty-second instalment of The Saga of Leo and Margaret.  
  
"You made an appointment with Ainsley Hayes for eight tomorrow morning?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"See, this is the kind of thing you really need to tell me, so…"  
  
"Margaret."  
  
"'Cause then I could have told you that you're in Manhattan at eight tomorrow morning."  
  
"Right."  
  
"Do you need me to explain the rules on making appointments again?"  
  
"Margaret."  
  
"Would you like me to send you a memo?"  
  
"Margaret! Reschedule the appointment, would you?"  
  
"Fine."  
  
"Josh?" Leo notices me hovering in the doorway. "Come on in."  
  
I keep as far on the other side of the room as humanly possible when I go past Margaret's desk. She terrifies me. I think she learned it from Mrs Landingham. Except Margaret hasn't yet figured out the value of keeping a jar of cookies on her desk.   
  
"She seems a bit…"  
  
"She gets like that when I make appointments without consulting her. Something about invading her turf."  
  
"What did you want to see me about?"  
  
"I wanted to make sure that you two did what I told you and stayed out of the building for twelve hours."  
  
"We did." I fiddle with a pencil for about three minutes before I realise that I'm driving my boss crazy. "Leo, about this meeting with Ainsley Hayes…"  
  
"I have to reschedule it for this afternoon."  
  
"I thought she wasn't flying back from North Carolina until this afternoon."  
  
"Her flight gets into National at five-thirty. I'm having a car meet her from the airport and bringing her straight here, and we'll do the meeting before we leave. I don't want it hanging over our heads during the Convention."  
  
"Right. Leo. I want to sit in on the meeting."  
  
"No."  
  
"Leo…"  
  
"Absolutely not."  
  
"Why the hell not?"  
  
"Because it's personal. For all of us, but for you and Sam especially, and if you're in the meeting then you're liable to pick her up and throw her out the window."  
  
"Leo, I'm not going to say anything. I just want to be there."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because I want to know why she did it. Because she's the reason our lives are now on the front page of every newspaper from here to Mexico. Because she's the reason we had a fight on Friday that ended in me either walking out or being kicked out, depending on which way you look…"  
  
I trail off. Oops.   
  
"He kicked you out?" Leo has that look on his face. "He kicked you out?"  
  
"Remember when you said that we should assume you didn't want to know anything about my love life?"  
  
"That's why you were sleeping in the office?"  
  
"Technically." I choose to not explain the exact reasons why I was sleeping in the office, because I'm not a huge fan of sounding like a fifteen-year-old girl in front of my boss. "But that's not the point. The point is that you said that we should assume you didn't want to know anything about my love life."  
  
"I did."  
  
"Then we should assume you don't want to know about the fight Sam and I had Friday night."  
  
"You are still together though, right?"  
  
"I grovelled, and, then CJ walked in on us making out."   
  
"That was an overshare. That, right there."  
  
"Anyway, to return to the point I was making… actually, I didn't really have that much of a point. She did her best to screw our lives up and I want to know why she did it. That's all."  
  
When he pauses, I hope that maybe I've managed to actually wear him down. Then I remember that I've known Leo McGarry longer than the President has, and that nothing and nobody has ever managed to wear him down if he didn't want to be worn down. In the end, it takes me forty-five minutes of reason, logic, and eventually just plain begging before he relents. The relenting, by the way, comes complete with the threat of having the Secret Service restrain me, but the point is that he does agree to let me sit in on the meeting. If I stay still, shut up, and do not under any circumstances do anything that has the potential to alienate the entire Republican Party any further than they're already alienated by virtue of being, you know, Republican.   
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
Three hours later, I am dauntingly close to the prospect of actually having to sit still, shut up, and not alienate the Republican Party. Three things which nobody could truthfully say I'm any good at, added to which, I really, really do not like Ainsley Hayes. I think the equation of all that made me… I suppose 'flake out' would be as good a phrase as any. At any rate, I've driven Donna so far up the wall that she's gone and dragged Sam out of his office and into mine. She deposits him in the chair with the words,  
  
"Please calm him down before I kill one of us."  
  
"You're only going to have to walk all the way back there again," I inform him. "Margaret should be calling me, you know, soon."  
  
"You talked Leo into letting you sit in on his meeting with Ainsley Hayes."  
  
"'Talked into' may not be the most accurate way…"  
  
"'Cause I gotta tell you, as far as bad ideas go, this one pretty much beats them all."   
  
"From the guy who set the White House on fire."  
  
"That was as much you as it was me, and… you're changing the subject."  
  
"Yes." I grin. "You noticed."  
  
"The actual, you know, issue at hand here is that if you sit in a meeting with Leo and Ainsley Hayes, which will in all probability end up in her being told to go back to work and not do it again, you're gonna throw the Republican lawyer out the window."  
  
Can I digress here for a moment and say how much it freaks me out when my boyfriend channels my boss?  
  
"Hang on. Why do we think she's gonna get told to go back to work and not do it again?"  
  
"Because, much as we regret it sometimes, we're First Amendment advocates. Seriously, Josh, you'll throw her out the window."  
  
"I'm not going to throw her out the window. Leo has permission to restrain me using the Secret Service if he so desires… okay, so maybe 'permission' is pushing it a bit, and 'invoked his right as my boss' would be slightly less, uh, lying, but still. I'm not going to throw her out the…"  
  
"Josh!"  
  
Sam seems to have blown his shot at calming me down when Donna reappears in the doorway.  
  
"Try to arrange your body into a position that makes your clothes look less wrinkled than they actually, you know, are. Leo's ready for you."  
  
I stand up. I'm wearing my oldest, most faded jeans and one of Sam's sweaters with a hole in the elbow. There is no conceivable way to make them look any newer, less faded, or cleaner. So I run my hand through my hair, take a look at my watch that no longer sucks since Sam confiscated it and got it fixed, and head off to Leo's office looking exactly like I look. I'm meeting with the leader of the free world on Air Force One in four hours, and I have no intention of getting changed before that, so Ainsley Hayes can just go be damned.  
  
I do not, of course, tell her that when I slide covertly into the office and sit down, trying very hard to not be noticed. Leo relenting, apparently, did not include him agreeing to wait for me before starting the meeting, so when I sit down, he's already well into his stride. They both ignore me as Ainsley keeps right on talking, not quite in iambic pentameter but close enough.  
  
"The point that I was making, sir, is that the public, who as this administration has already discovered, do not appreciate things about the people running their country being hidden from them…"  
  
"The only thing wrong with the point you were making was that you omitted to mention that the public did not appreciate things about the President like the fact that he has a disease of the central nervous system being hidden from them, and that there's just a small possibility that some of them will have a bit more perspective when it comes to things about two of the President's staffers like the fact that they're in a legal and consenting relationship being hidden from them."  
  
"Sir…"  
  
"And I would remind you that even if the public doesn't appreciate some things that this administration has done, it's not like that stopped them from voting us as the Democratic Party's nominee."  
  
"They haven't, as of yet, voted you to a second term, and the Republican Party, although more conservative as a whole on gay rights to be sure, by no means has a monopoly on homophobic voters, and it is my opinion that the majority of people in this country will object to having two homosexuals working at this level in the Executive Branch. And you did not win the popular vote in 1998."  
  
I manage to choke down a strangled noise.  
  
"But yet we got to the White House."  
  
"Yes, you did."  
  
"And I did not summon you here to discuss the fitness of Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn to hold their positions."  
  
"Then for what purpose was I summoned?"  
  
"I want to know why you felt the need to tell the press and the Christian Right about a relationship that has nothing to do with anyone except for the two people involved."  
  
"I felt a duty to inform the public…"  
  
"You did not inform!" Leo's face looks like a thundercloud. "You did not inform. You made judgements."  
  
"I made…"  
  
"You made moral and ethical judgements about two people who work in this building and you weren't what I would call shy about airing these judgements to the conservative press."  
  
"Sir."  
  
"Good God, Ainsley!" He finally explodes. "I was under the impression that we were supposed to be on the same team!"  
  
"I'm a Republican."  
  
"I noticed."  
  
There's a long and uncomfortable silence during which I actually find it mildly amusing to watch the White House Chief of Staff and the Deputy White House Counsel practically having a staring contest. Ainsley cracks first.   
  
"I felt that I had a social responsibility to do what I did."  
  
"As far as libel is concerned, what you did is on fairly shaky political and legal terrain."  
  
His eyes flick past Ainsley's shoulder to meet mine, and I'm given an almost imperceptible raise of his eyebrow as he checks with me that he didn't just screw up the Supreme Court's definition of libel. I shrug. As long as people keep on insulting my understanding of legal definitions and the amount of time I spent - or didn't spend, depending on who you listen to - studying in law school, and as long as they keep on telling me I'm not a real lawyer, then I really see very little point in me accurately remembering legislation on things like libel.   
  
On the other hand, the 'real' lawyer in the room doesn't correct him.   
  
"I can't, unfortunately, fire you…"  
  
"Can you accept my resignation?"  
  
"Your what?" Leo asks with his mouth open.  
  
'Your what?' echoes the little voice inside my head.  
  
"I don't feel that I can stay here with people who have ideological and moral values so different from my own, not to mention the fact that I don't think that many people will now be, have they ever been, willing to work with me or comfortable to be around me."  
  
She stands up. We're still speechless.  
  
"You'll have it in writing by the time you return from New York."  
  
She leaves the room. She's completely unaware that she's managed to both render us dumb and make our days at the same time. Finally I manage to get my vocal cords back into working condition.  
  
"That was unexpected."  
  
"To put it mildly," he agrees.  
  
"Oh, yeah."  
  
"I wanted to break her neck."  
  
"Believe me when I tell you that you weren't the only one."  
  
"I didn't think so. But you didn't throw her out of the window," he notes. "Nor did you alienate the entire Republican Party."  
  
"You asked me to keep out of it."  
  
"Not that you've ever ignored my instructions before or anything."  
  
I nod and remember our second Christmas in office - our first Christmas in the White House, really - when he had Sam and I tailed on the off chance that we were as stupid as we look.   
  
"Yeah, I know, but… you asked me, and sometimes it's what sons do for old friends of their fathers."  
  
I end awkwardly and shuffle my feet for a couple of minutes before Leo glances up and gives me a brisk nod.   
  
"Right. Is the new 'Leo asked me to do it so I will' thing a temporary fad or d'you think it might have a shot at lasting until we're out of office?"  
  
"Not a chance."  
  
"Didn't think so." He shoos me away. "Get outta here. Round your people up, or, you know, get someone more competent in the art of keeping track of things to round your people up. We've got a plane to catch."  
  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
I owe thanks to all the usual people for all the usual things. Rhiannon, mostly, for hanging in there and her printer, for not yet having quit and refused to print out anything else I ever send her. The people who have so far been very kind and not sued me. Lisa, for listening to me patiently rant while I scoured the Internet for appropriate names for Josh's mom... continuing in that same vein, thanks very definitely do *not* go to Jo and Ryo, who write so damn well that I had trouble convincing my addled brain that her name really isn't Adira... oh, hell, come back, I was kidding... I love you guys, really.   
  
Technical point regarding what is about to become yet another huge anomaly between my universe and the Sorkinverse. Sam will, so far as The Shoulders of Giants is concerned, be sticking around as a member of the senior staff for the considerable future. In the Sorkinverse, he's about to be elected the first Democratic member of the US House of Representatives for the California 47th, and I'll be very proud of him, but as a writer, I've sent that part of Sorkin's timeline spinning off into an AU.  
  
Chapter 8 is currently stuck in a big pit known as writers' block and me having no time. It will, I promise, get written eventually. 


	8. Napoleon's Battle Plan

Chapter 8: Napoleon's Battle Plan  
  
"You look like hell."  
  
"You don't look so terrific yourself," CJ mumbles through a mouthful of salad as she hovers in the cabin door. "Going for the gangster look?"  
  
I realize that her fork is pointing in the general direction of my jaw, prompting me to prod it experimentally. The by-product of my fight with Sam on Friday finally started to swell and turn an unflattering shade of purple early this afternoon, and apparently its now noticeable enough that people who aren't looking for it can see that I got well and truly clobbered. Testament to the fact that Sam Seaborn is not just a pretty face, I've also made the somewhat unwelcome discovery that he packs a pretty mean punch too. The thing stings like a sonofabitch when I poke it. I wince.  
  
"Don't ask."  
  
I return my attention to the twenty-eight-page position paper on Medicaid that landed on my desk at some point last week. Between preparations for the Convention and the hash I managed to make of my - our - personal life, Donna swears that she could actually hear my desk start to creak under the weight of the paperwork I haven't got round to. A one-hour flight to New York - delayed, incidentally, by more than ninety minutes - would, according to her, be a perfect opportunity for me to catch up on some of it. This specific memo manages to hold my concentration for no more than six lines before I turn back to CJ.  
  
"Hey, Ceej?" I very carefully keep my eyes trained on my shoes. "You wouldn't happen to know if Sam talked to his mom today, would you?"  
  
"Given that I'm neither his therapist nor his girlfriend?"  
  
"If you were his therapist," I point out. "I would no longer be the only mentally unstable one, and it would throw the entire balance of this relationship off kilter. And if you were his girlfriend, I might be forced to do something, you know, violent and painful."  
  
"Sure." She considers this. "You know I could take you, right?"  
  
"In unarmed combat? Didn't doubt it for a second."  
  
"Smart guy."  
  
"Did you come down here for an actual reason, or was it just to cast doubt on my masculinity?"  
  
"Staff meeting in five minutes." I can feel my eyebrows rise into what Toby dubbed my 'I didn't know that' look about three hours after I joined the campaign. According to him, I mostly did it when someone mentioned something I probably was meant to learn in law school. CJ notices and waves her fork around a bit more while she finishes chewing. "It was meant to be at the hotel, but it'll be past eleven by the time we get there, what with one thing and another."  
  
That phrase refers to things like Marine One not showing up on time.  
  
"Five minutes?"   
  
"Probably more like four and a half now you wasted that thirty seconds having me explain it to you."  
  
I leave CJ and her salad to themselves after stealing a couple of pieces of pasta, and spend one of my four and a half minutes tracking down Sam. Unlike the rest of us, in spite of a ninety-minute delay and a weekend that was by no standard relaxing, he doesn't look like hell so much as he still looks like he belongs on the cover of some random glossy magazine. He also, I notice with something of a self-satisfied smirk, manages to retain something of a post-coital glow several hours after the, well, coital part of it. He glances up at me and pulls his glasses off.   
  
"What?"  
  
"Senior staff." I wait while he shuffles a stack of paper into some semblance of order and stands up. "You talk to your mom yet?"  
  
"Sure," Sam nods before starting to head up the plane, very obviously looking at anything but me and managing to be anything but subtle about it.  
  
"You know, Sam, I may have a pretty bad poker face, but you have no poker face."  
  
"I have a great poker face!" he exclaims defensively.  
  
"Well, sure, but not with me, you don't."  
  
"No, maybe not." He concedes the point. "I did, however, call my mother. Really," he adds, seeing the sceptical expression on my face. "It just wasn't what I would refer to as the classic definition of talking so much as I would probably refer to it as me saying 'hey, mom, it's Sam', and her not wasting any time in hanging the phone up on me."  
  
"She hung up on you." I stop a couple of inches short of the President's cabin. "Seriously, she hung up on you?"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"Well, shit."  
  
"I would say that pretty well sums it up, yes."  
  
"Why would she do that?"  
  
"One would imagine she wasn't all that thrilled about getting the details of her only son's love life from Mark Gottfried and the… whatever the hell half-cocked right-wing rag it is she reads, in which case I imagine it's my fault." He pauses and looks thoughtful. "Then of course there's always the possibility that she's a paranoid homophobe who even as we speak is filing the paperwork necessary to disown me, in which case I suppose it would be her fault."  
  
"You two do realize that you'll most likely be able to participate in this meeting better if you're on the other side of the door, right?"  
  
I'm saved from having to come up with a supportive response that isn't a flat-out lie by Toby, who brushes past with his usual grumpy sarcasm, leaving us very little option but to follow him inside. Unless, that is, we have a burning desire for the President of the United States and his senior staff to show a sudden and disturbing interest in what we're talking about. In the past couple of weeks I've started to think that people who believe dating a colleague invariably results in your personal life being dragged into the office might have a point. Because Sam and I spent two years doing a very good job of keeping work and home pretty well separate entities, and then we came out and didn't so much drag our personal life into the office as our co-workers became extremely nosey about things that are, to put it bluntly, none of their damn business. I slide in the door in time to hear Leo ascertaining that nobody blew anybody else up in the hour since we left the White House, and the President asking what's next.  
  
"The press want to know when they'll be getting texts."  
  
"They're not," Sam tells her as he sits down on the end of a table.  
  
"Sure." CJ taps her notebook with a pen and looks confused. "Okay. Why not?"  
  
"Because the text mentions, you know, several times, the name of the President's running mate and…"  
  
"And we're not leaking that," she finishes. "Yeah, you know I'll be sending them all in your direction when they get hostile about this, right?"  
  
"Knock yourself out."  
  
"What's next?"  
  
"Joey's people have been working the phones, she has polling data, and she's putting together a breakdown that she'll be able to go over with us in the morning."  
  
"7am." Leo nods. "Anything else."  
  
"Can I say a word about Josh and Sam?" CJ raises her index finger and proceeds to say a word about Josh and Sam without waiting for actual permission. "So far, it's been the weekend, but we're going to be spending the next three days in the almost constant company of a press gaggle who want to report the news."  
  
"This isn't news," Toby interrupts. "The Convention is news. This is a sex scandal which to anyone with an iota of intelligence isn't even scandalous."   
  
"I've got thirty boys and girls back there who don't make the distinction, and as far as their editors are concerned, news is what sells newspapers."  
  
"You anticipate questions about prior relationships?" I ask doubtfully. "I mean, you actually think the press are going to want to know?"  
  
"The press are absolutely going to want to know." Leo looks like he's explaining something to a four-year-old. "The two of you, go over this with CJ and Toby, but for God's sake do it somewhere else because your sex life is not something I want to know about."  
  
My sex life isn't something I want him to know about either. There's something just wrong about discussing that in front of your father's best friend. I follow CJ, Toby, and Sam into a smaller cabin and close the door before starting again.  
  
"Why do you…" I stop. "No. Technically, I know why they'll be interested in it, but why do you think that it's going to be a big deal?"  
  
"Josh, where other people have relationships, you seem to have fiery plane crashes. Before this one, anyway," she amends, catching the full flood of Sam's warning glare. "At this point, it's a waste of time hoping that every woman you ever slept with isn't going to come crawling out of the woodwork to tell Larry King that if you had mentioned at any point you were gay, it might have ironed out a few key problems."  
  
"For the nineteenth and final time, I am not gay."  
  
"That doesn't matter on Hard Copy." CJ gives Sam a disbelieving look and he shrugs. "Sorry. You said that after the whole Laurie fiasco."  
  
"I did, and you're right, but don't think you're getting out of this, Spanky."  
  
"What'd I do?"  
  
"You were engaged to a female reporter who thinks that I'm an arrogant jackass," I point out. "That's three things right there before we even start on the hooker."  
  
"Call girl," he corrects automatically.  
  
"Whatever. You - seriously, no matter what people say about me having fiery plane crashes more than actual relationships - you still win hands down when it comes to choosing people you absolutely shouldn't date."  
  
I can't believe that we're having this conversation in front of our colleagues. And I'm having a lot of trouble getting my head around the fact that I couldn't give a damn. It might have something to do with the fact that when you realise this could all be on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow morning, the issue of telling your friends gains a certain degree of perspective, even if one of them does happen to be the White House Press Secretary.   
  
"Even if I did - which, by the way, I don't, and we're getting back to that - but even if I did, I'm not the one who holds the award for the worst break-up ever."  
  
I cringe on the inside.   
  
"Josh?"   
  
"Yeah, I… um. Yeah." I clear my throat. "Much as I hate to say this, and although I'm hoping it was such a bad experience she blanked me from her mind, yeah. Sam might well have a point there."  
  
"Are we…" CJ looks slightly lost. "We're not talking about Mandy, right? Because while that may not have been the worst ever, I gotta say, it must've come close."  
  
"It did, but no, we're not talking about Mandy." Sam wasn't exaggerating when he says that this was the worst break-up ever. "My girlfriend from college. And it's a little embarrassing to admit, but I can't remember her name. So, anyway, we were together for five or six weeks before she walked into my dorm room and found me in bed with… you know what, I'd like to say a couple of things in my own defence. I was nineteen, I was stupid, I was incredibly confused about my sexuality, and it's not like she found us doing anything other than sleeping."  
  
"Of course," Sam adds. "You were also naked and, you know, in bed together, so it's not like it was monumentally out of line for her to infer a few things about what had happened before she found you."  
  
"Overshare." Toby goes slightly green. "This girl, whoever she was, found you in bed with who, exactly?"  
  
"Dan Harris. The captain of the debating team."  
  
"So." CJ unflatteringly summarises what Sam and I have just told her. "We've got a problem with an anonymous woman who you dated at Harvard and who walked in on you in bed with another guy, and we've got a potential problem with the guy…"  
  
"Not the potential problem you highlighted before," I interrupt. "You said that every woman I had ever slept with would come crawling out the woodwork saying that had I mentioned that I was gay it would have cleared up a few key issues, and I'm just thinking that had Dan not known I was attracted to men we would never have gotten to first base, let alone made it into bed."  
  
"When I highlighted that potential problem, I didn't know there had been other men!"  
  
"Two. It's not like I did the Yankee's starting line-up on the Kennedy desk."  
  
"I did not need to hear that." CJ looks skywards. "I could have gone my entire life without hearing you say that."  
  
Toby, whose nauseous hue appeared to have passed, turns another vibrant shade of green. CJ looks as though she's trying to figure out how to forget I ever spoke those words. And Sam, who looks slightly flushed, seems to have been rendered temporarily dumb.   
  
"Moving swiftly onwards." CJ coughs. "And I'm not at all sure I want to know the answer to this next question. Who was the second guy?"  
  
I was hoping I wouldn't have to get into this part. I study my shoes in the hope of gaining divine inspiration or something.   
  
"Matt."  
  
"Matt?" The penny drops. "Matt Skinner?"  
  
"You slept with a Republican?"  
  
"Nine weeks, twenty years ago."  
  
"And you didn't maybe think that this would have, I don't know, ramifications?"  
  
"Not so much, no!" I close my eyes. "We were working on the Hill. He was a kid getting some experience before he started college; I was a kid killing time before I went to Yale. White House Deputy Chief of Staff wasn't even on my road map! Working for the President, that was some distant fantasy. And even if I had thought it would have ramifications… God, Sam and I, that was gonna have ramifications, and it's not like that stopped us!" I turn rapidly to the other half of that 'us' before he starts thinking that he should give me a bruise on the other side of my face to match the one I've already got. "I meant that in the best way possible."  
  
"And Sam, you knew about them?"  
  
"Well, not at the time, no, but… yeah, I know about it now."   
  
"How the hell did you find out about it?"  
  
"He told me." The look on Sam's face tells her that that much should have been obvious. "Let's clear up a couple of things. We were together for three months before anything actually happened between us. No, this wasn't entirely by choice, and yes, it did have a lot to do with that thing that happened with a bunch of neo-Nazis in a Dodge Durango, but I sat and bared my soul the morning after Rosslyn, and it was three months before we slept together - election night, if you were that interested."  
  
CJ and Toby's faces say that they weren't, that much.   
  
"What Sam is attempting to say," I pick up. "Except using far more words and going into much greater detail than actually necessary, is that we were getting into what turned out to be a pretty serious relationship. We did the partner history thing a while ago, although I can't say that when my dad gave me that talk on the birds and the bees I ever envisaged having a partner history conversation with the White House Press Secretary..."  
  
"Okay." Toby raises his palms outward. "Is he… I don't know, do you think he's going to tell people?"  
  
"He's a Republican member of the House of Representatives. He gets no mileage out of revealing that he had a fling with a guy from the other side when he was eighteen, especially not when that guy's already out and spoken for."  
  
"If he was planning on making an issue of this, he would have done it Saturday."  
  
"I think that's probably true," CJ nods. "Okay. You had a fling with Matt Skinner. Any other disastrous relationships I should know about?"  
  
I think about this and then start counting off on my fingers.  
  
"Uh… we've done Dan, Matt, and random girl whose name I can't quite remember. Rachel Goodwin. I was with her for two years; I was a law student, and she was a Chemistry undergrad. She graduated and went to Canada to work for a pharmaceuticals company. I went to work on the Hill. We still liked each other. Then there was this one girl who I slept with once and who never knew my name. I had an on-again, off-again thing with Al - female - Rosenberg for about four and a half years, and yes, she might be one of your people who comes crawling out of the woodwork."  
  
"Commitment issues?" Toby guesses. "Have to say, she wouldn't be completely out of line on that one."  
  
"Anyone else?"  
  
"Mandy. That's it."  
  
"That's it?"  
  
"Mandy and I had a longer history than you guys ever knew about. I was still working for Brennan when we met, and then I broke up with her…"  
  
"Spectacularly," CJ mutters.  
  
"On the night before the election. I was single from us crashing and burning to us," I make random gesticulations between Sam and I, "Getting together. You knew that part."  
  
"Okay. So you have, in the course of your life, slept with…" She calculates it. "Seven - no, eight - people, only two of whom are likely to say anything to the press. You know, for you, that's less trouble than I expected. Sam?"  
  
"I'll have you know that I'm even less trouble than Josh, thank you."  
  
"Who'd you sleep with?"  
  
"Nina Macintosh, in my freshman and sophomore years at Princeton, and who cheated on me. Andrea Jeffries, in my senior year for four months, which kind of fizzled out when we graduated. Lucy Pomerantz, at Duke. We broke up because we were, for want of a better term, completely incompatible, but we were still great friends." He wrinkles his nose. "Incidentally, she set me up with Lisa. Then Laurie, and Mal - except, I didn't sleep with her - and Josh."  
  
"Josh was your first guy?"  
  
"On the levels where you consider that I fell for him when I was twenty-two, that's not such a significant achievement."  
  
Except for the part where I freaked when Sam told me that I was his first guy. It's something of a responsibility, no matter what levels you look at it on.  
  
"Lisa?" Toby speaks up. "This is…"  
  
"This is the Lisa I used to be enagaged to," Sam nods.  
  
"Christ, Sam. She's a blood-sucking fiend."  
  
"In the non-vampire sense. And how many could you possibly have imagined there were, anyway?"  
  
"Hey." CJ's eyes light up. "Lisa Sherbourne-Seaborn?"  
  
"We never got as far as the hyphen, but yeah, her."   
  
"Your ex-fiancee," Toby sounds a lot less thrilled than CJ about this. "Is, first and foremost, a reporter, and second of all, thinks that your boyfriend is an arrogant jackass."  
  
"Yeah, I can see where you might have a problem with that. She also sort of blames Josh for us not getting married, which might actually be a reasonable point considering he showed up in my office all dripping with an idiot grin on his face to drag me off to New Hampshire because he'd found the real thing…"  
  
"You weren't walking out of that office with your career intact!" I know the full story of the ship and the oil and feel the need for this point to be made. "Not your career in corporate law, anyway, and certainly not a partnership at Gage Whitney."  
  
"I would also say," he continues, ignoring me. "That everyone at some point in their lives thinks that Josh is an arrogant jackass, including me and his mother, so in his defence, it's not exactly his fault that she jumped on the bandwagon. She also, however, saw him hug me at the State of the Union, which could possibly be a point that doesn't exactly go in his favor."  
  
I suddenly find three pairs of eyes fixed in my direction.  
  
"You hugged him?" The light in CJ's eyes suddenly seems to be more dangerous. "You hugged him in front of someone? Remind me again, how did you two not get caught before now?"  
  
"I hugged him in front of about three hundred people!" I exclaim. "It was manly and backslapping and gave absolutely no reason for suspicion. I was his best friend, and he had just written a really great speech, and you don't think it would have aroused more suspicion if I hadn't? On the other hand," I agree, slumping a bit, "It's probably a little too much to hope that she won't have remembered it."  
  
"Probably, yeah," she says sarcastically. "That's the lot? For both of you?"  
  
"You're done."  
  
"Surprisingly, your…" She looks at Sam. "Relationships look the most trouble. Unsurprisingly, of his possibly most problematic, you," Her gaze swivels toward me. "Seem to be the one mostly to blame for why it's problematic."  
  
"Hey!" She shrugs. I suppose she's got a point. I'm just not admitting that, at least not to her, so I rapidly change the subject. "What about Laurie?"  
  
"What about her?"  
  
"You don't think she's a potentially problematic relationship?"  
  
"Well, she was when she was happening. Now?" CJ raises one eyebrow. "She's an attorney, and she can't bring up her liaison with Sam without also dragging up the fact that she put herself through law school by being paid for sex. On a personal level? I wouldn't be surprised if you get a call from her at some point. On a media level, she probably has less to gain and more to lose from this than Matt Skinner does. No, Sam's right. I'm done with you."  
  
She gets up to leave, beaten to the door by Toby, and turns back with her hand on the doorjamb.  
  
"Thanks, guys," she begins awkwardly. "I know that can't have been the most comfortable experience for either of you."  
  
"Don't suppose it was exactly a walk in the park for you." Sam waves her half-apology off. "Hey, it's something for us to tell your kids. You know, 'did mommy ever tell you about the time she had to talk to me and Uncle Josh about the other people we had…'"  
  
"Sam Seaborn!" CJ cuts him off before he gets to the end of the sentence. "Don't you dare."  
  
He smirks, which Donna swears he's picked up from spending too much time around me, and she starts to make a quick exit before either of us can attempt to prolong the conversation. I check my watch. Ten-twenty. We're meant to be landing in New York in a little over ten minutes. Sam's gone quiet, and I'm starting to doze off in my less-than-relaxing position on the floor when Charlie slips in.  
  
"Hey, Charlie." I struggle to my feet. "What's up?"  
  
"The President wants to see you."  
  
"Both of us?"  
  
"Just you." He nods at Sam. "He said he'd let you get over being interrogated by a formidable woman. He figures Josh has done so many dumb things in the last five years he should be used to it."  
  
"What did I…"  
  
"Secret plan to fight inflation," they say with one voice.  
  
"Sooner or later, you'll have to let that one go."  
  
"Sure," Charlie agrees, ushering me out of the room as I notice the smirk that's back on Sam's face. "Let's give it forty or fifty years, okay? And after that we can move onto Mandy, the Christian Right, lighting a fire in the Mural Room, standing in the bullpen holding Donna's underwear, sitting down in your chair when there was no chair there…"  
  
"Point taken," I mumble, raising my hand to knock on the door. "I'm sure I could think of a few things that you've done."  
  
"Don't hold your breath."  
  
He disappears as I open the door to the President's cabin, noticing with a certain degree of relief that Leo is no longer there. I have the greatest respect for him, and in some regards, greater than I have for the President. In the last five or six years, I've also come to count him as something of a friend. But I have no idea what the President wants to talk about, and as I've said at least three times in the last two days, with all the respect and friendship possible in the world, there's no getting away from the fact that it's not my idea of a good time to get into my love life with the guy who was my dad's best friend and who still is my boss. I mean, I couldn't swear to it that he never changed my diapers… okay, I didn't want to go there. I shut my eyes, count to ten, and when I open them, discover that the President is staring at me with some confusion.  
  
"Good evening, Mr President."  
  
"Have a seat. How's the Medicaid bill looking?"  
  
"It's, uh…" Well, to begin with, I only got about twelve lines into the memo. "I'm going to be getting into it more after the Convention, but it looks good."  
  
"Really? Sam has some problems with it."  
  
"He does?" He does? "He hasn't talked about it with me, sir."  
  
"Well, you guys work a seventy-hour week, and that's when things are going well. I would imagine you want to forget about it when you get home."  
  
"Were you…" I blink. "Were you just trying to ease into that?"  
  
"I need to work on the subtlety?"  
  
"Little bit, yes, sir."  
  
"Seriously, Josh. I never talked about it, really, when it was just the staff who knew, and then the media blitz came out of the blue. How are you two doing?"  
  
"Pretty well, actually." I'm surprised as I realize that's true. "Better than I expected, anyway."  
  
"Have you talked to your mother yet?"  
  
"Only yesterday morning, to tell you the truth." I grin as I remember a few of her more colorful points. "She was great. Not quite so great when it came to me not having let her in on it sooner, but… She asked me to take Sam down there for Thanksgiving. Then she called us at home this morning and ordered him to take me down there. Feels like they're tag-teaming me."  
  
"What about Sam's parents?"  
  
"That's… a little more complicated."  
  
I don't elaborate, and he doesn't ask me to, as the plane turns into descent and the pilot's voice comes over the PA, asking us to fasten our seatbelts and telling us that we'll be touching down in a few moments time. We remain in silence for a minute, staring out of the cabin window at the Manhattan skyline and the lights on the Hudson Bridge. Washington is, and always will be, my city, but there's something amazing about New York. Finally, as the floodlit runway of LaGuardia comes into view, the President breaks the quiet.  
  
"These next few days, things are going to change, you know that."  
  
"Sir?"  
  
"You've managed to avoid directly confronting the press so far, and believe me when I tell you I'd like nothing more than for it to stay that way, but you and Sam are both going to be fending off a hail of reporters and journalists and Bartlet-baiters and photographers for the next few days. Are you going to be okay?"  
  
I consider this. As the wheels hit the tarmac and Air Force One comes to a juddering halt, the President stands up, followed by me. From my vantage point of an extra four or five inches, I look him squarely in the eye.  
  
"I don't know. But I always thought Napoleon had the right idea."  
  
"He did."   
  
Together, we join the rest of the staff and the First Lady, who seems to have been making herself scarce during the flight, in disembarking from the plane. I touch Sam's shoulder as we follow them onto the steps and feel the first blast of air after an hour on a plane, surprisingly cool for the middle of July. The flashes from what looks to be fifty or so cameras on the ground almost blinds me for a second before I relax. Napoleon's plan had a hell of a lot more sense in it than most people give him credit for.  
  
First you show up.  
  
Then you see what happens.  
  
______________________________________________________________________________________________  
I'm going to begin by apologising profusely for this having taken so long, and the truth is, it's been sitting on my hard drive since shortly after Christmas waiting for me to do something with it. I found it again this week, made a few minor changes, and figured that the damned thing's been festering for three months, maybe it's time I did something with it. Enjoy it, because likely the next time you'll be hearing from me will be the beginning of July. That's not absolute, because I do have the first half of Chapter 9 written in my head, and I may get that finished sometime around Easter. Just, don't hold your breath. At the time of writing, I have 31 teaching days left at school, metamorphosing far too rapidly into 13 A-level exams, and they have a monopoly on my time right now. Stick with me. I have three months off this summer and I plan to have this story make a lot of headway over that time.  
  
A lot of the credit must go to Aaron Sorkin and the gang at CSC. I hit on Napoleon's battle plan when this chapter was on the long road to nowhere, and for it I'm very much indebted to Casey. 


	9. The Substance of Things Hoped For

Chapter 9: The Substance of Things Hoped For   
  
"Everybody shut the hell up!"   
  
The force of my voice surprises even me, but then again, I'm having a really bad day and it's not even seven o'clock. Between several delays and a couple of minor disasters, none of us got to bed before two, and, on checking in, Sam and I were discreetly gaped at by the hotel staff. We see very little point in continuing to check into separate rooms while simultaneously having our relationship plastered across almost every national newspaper in existence. Forty minutes ago, I fell out of bed answering the phone. Now there's nine of us in Toby's room, that's before we even consider trying to find room to shoehorn the President and Leo in here, and I can barely hear myself think. So, yeah, polite just isn't cutting it this morning.   
  
There's a rumor starting to come through on the wires that could be the noose for this campaign to hang itself with.   
  
"CJ, what the hell is going on?"   
  
Leo enters the room, followed by President Bartlet, and, without preamble, turns on the woman who got him out of bed in the first place. We're all already on our feet; there wasn't anywhere near enough extra floor space for us to try sitting down, and, CJ, instead of trying to blend into the furnishings the way most people including me do when Leo McGarry gets that look on his face, looks down at him from a height that's frankly intimidating, stares him in the eye, and utters one flat sentence that makes him shut up.   
  
"AP and Reuters are reporting that Ann Stark is Governor Ritchie's new Senior Political Director."   
  
Leo's mouth opens and closes a couple of times. If I weren't suppressing such a burning desire to burn a hole in the carpet, I would find his unwitting impersonation of Gail funny.   
  
"Is it…"   
  
"True?" she asks. "I don't know. Simon got the wire reports an hour ago and he could hardly call Florida to confirm anything at the crack of dawn because, even laying aside everything else, it makes us look as though we're worried about it. CNN started running a feed twenty minutes ago. My gut's telling me that there's something behind this, I wouldn't be seeing reports all over the wires if there wasn't."   
  
"Confirm it."   
  
"I'm on it."   
  
"And someone tell me why we're only just now finding out about this."   
  
"Because…"   
  
"Josh, isn't this the kind of thing we pay you for?"   
  
Is it? To be honest, I've never been entirely sure what they pay me for, but I have a suspicion that now would maybe not be the best time to admit to that, so I construct a non-answer.   
  
"We're just now finding out about this because there are ways and means of making this sort of a deal without anyone ever knowing before it's signed and sealed. If they've done it fast, if they've kept the circle of people involved to a bare minimum… 1998, right after the Iowa Caucus? I was the chief of staff to the prohibitive favorite to be the Democratic Party's nominee for the presidency, there were, you know, a few people in Beltway politics who had heard of me. How many people besides you three…" I wave my hand in the general direction of the President and Toby. "Knew that I was coming on board before I physically came back to the Hill and put my resignation on Hoynes's desk?"   
  
"There were reasons," Leo mutters. "Your own innate stubbornness being one of them."   
  
"Still."   
  
"We have a bit more influence these days, Josh, or at least the United States Constitution likes to believe we do. So how is it possible that this wasn't leaked to us by someone before now is what I'm asking."   
  
"We get blindsided by things. It happens."  
  
"Ann Stark's a wartime consigliere, Leo."   
  
I flatten my back against the wall and watch Toby with interest, wondering if the same guy who thought that Ann Stark was his friend and 'not as bad as you make her out to be' has finally gotten a clue. I get the feeling that they've had a conversation remarkably similar to this one before.   
  
"I'm a wartime consigliere too, Toby."   
  
"Yeah." He seems to consider this. "You're one of the good guys."   
  
"Sometimes I am."   
  
"Other times," I add, remembering all the tactics he employed to get me onto Bartlet for America, "Blackmail can be his middle name."   
  
"Nonetheless, Ann Stark, as I believe is the point we've been trying to make for the last ten minutes is, would be unlikely to recognise a clean campaign if one jumped up and bit her on the ass," Sam says savagely.   
  
"Okay." The President holds his hand up. "I'll accept it up to a point and it's not like we don't know that there are people out there – numerating something like half the country – who are going to throw a party the day I get out of office. But they exist and we know they exist and we've handled them before and won. When it's Ann, I sit in a room and listen to you all talk about her, and anyone would think she's Satan, dressed up in a woman's body and working for the GOP. So my question is this: how is this one different to any of the others?"   
  
"Because the sole purpose of this one existing is to screw me over?" Toby suggests.   
  
"Because she's going to pull a Lillienfield."   
  
I can't believe I didn't figure it out before. This whole thing starts to slot into place and an overwhelming part of my bran starts to curse loudly before it registers that CJ's asking what the hell I mean by 'pull a Lillienfield'.   
  
"Character attacks," I tell her abruptly. "On the staff. On the President, to a certain extent, but they would be inevitable no matter who was doing her job. She's going to campaign off the reasons America doesn't want *us* to be its senior staff."   
  
*The days of the best and brightest are over, to be replaced by Ivy League liberals and Hollywood darlings.*   
  
"Sam and Laurie." I've begun to pace before I realise that the entire step and a half I can take in any direction is actually more frustrating than just standing still. "Me and Sam. God and tax fraud and New York Jews, and yeah, fully accepting that that's my fault. Being relieved about potential wars." CJ beat herself up over that more than any of us could ever have done for her, and I would give anything to not have to drag it up again, but I'd rather the Republicans not be the first ones. "Leo and Sierra-Tucson. My mental health."   
  
"Josh."   
  
"No." I give Leo an apologetic look. "In this room with these people, we like to pretend that it doesn't matter, but this is a whole new thing. I have post-traumatic stress disorder and there are people – more people, in fact, than I'd like to imagine – who know that I do. If this campaign goes down the road I think it will, that could become a liability to us. She's going after votes by making the American people ask if we're the staff they want in the White House. You can't look at this objectively, but step back for a second from the part where you've known me for five years or more and you've seen me drunk off my ass and…" And *step back from the part where you're in love with me*, I want to say to Sam, but think better of it. "And you saw me go down. Imagine you're a taxpayer with no vested interest other than wanting your country to be governed as well as possible. Do you want a guy in the White House who, on his bad days, can snap when he hears a jazz musician in the street?!"   
  
"That's a worst-case scenario."   
  
"But it's not impossible."   
  
"You have your condition under control."   
  
"It can't be guaranteed that if I'm having a bad day, I won't hear something that sets it off."   
  
"It can't be guaranteed that if I'm in the Situation Room, I won't lose control of my mental function," the President reminds me. "But we're all still here."   
  
"With all due respect, Mr President…" Toby interrupts.   
  
"I know. I got up at a podium all set to say that I wasn't running for re-election for that very reason."   
  
"Yes."   
  
"It was an example," I tell them. "Any of those other things I named could be the thing that comes crashing down around our ears, the fact that I elaborated on mine was… it was an example, that's all."   
  
"I think Josh has a point," Leo says unexpectedly. Ten sets of eyes turn in his direction. "I think we have to put a new poll in the field and we have to ask them their opinion of the senior staff. Where they stand on the President's chief of staff being an alcoholic and a drug addict. Because my condition is no more guaranteed to remain under control than Josh's is or than MS is. What they would think if senior members of the White House were, from time to time, consulting with a therapist. Their opinion of two male staffers being involved."   
  
"We already put that question in the field," Sam points out.   
  
"With Ann Stark running spin for Ritchie," CJ counters reasonably, "The results of the poll Joey was doing this weekend could be moot already."   
  
"I still want to see it."   
  
"So do I." The President attempts to regain control of the meeting. "Where is Joey?"   
  
"I'm here." Almost as soon as she arrived in Washington from California on Saturday, Joey had to turn right back around and fly to Salt Lake City before coming to the Convention without the employee benefits of Air Force One. Her plane, I recall from a schedule Donna handed to me as Sam and I walked in the door this morning, landed in Kennedy at six-thirty. As I turn around to where she and Kenny are standing just inside the door, I notice that the population of the room has gone up to thirteen and if anyone else tries to come in, we'll be spilling out of the window. Her hands form seven words. "What do you need me to do?"   
  
______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
"How are you doing?"   
  
"Absolutely terrific," I mumble sarcastically as Sam hands me a cup of coffee. "You?"   
  
My bad day, to be frank, has been going from bad to worse to very much worse. To begin with, it didn't take too long to confirm that the rumors about Ann Stark were true, not that any of us had really doubted it. Then, the results of Joey's poll – the poll that CJ pointed out is probably going to be moot within the next forty-eight hours – told us… well, it was enlightening, to say the least, which isn't the same thing as saying it was encouraging. For example, there are actual people in America whom, on being asked the question 'would you consider yourself homophobic', will say yes. On top of that, just because the rest of the population wouldn't consider themselves homophobic, that doesn't mean they believe it's okay for two male White House 'senior advisors' to be in a relationship. The good news, I suppose, is that the percentage of votes it's actually lost us is minimal. It would seem that most of the people who intended to vote for us aren't going to change their mind because of Sam and I; it's just that a lot of them don't exactly support us.   
  
And then, of course, I've been stewing over the impact me having PTSD could have on this election.   
  
Because when I told them that I'd been using that as an example? There was the bigger picture and it wasn't the best time for me to have a fight with Leo about my mental instability. But I keep on remembering how I cracked over Cano, and how I lost it in the Oval Office, and how I very nearly lost it in front of that reporter at the Illinois primary when the President had his mild episode, and between me being outed from the closet and my post-traumatic stress and the inescapable fact that one day when I screw up it's going to be one screw-up too many, I'm not exactly batting for Employee of the Year, here. I blurt out the sentence that's been resting on my subconscious all morning.   
  
"Maybe I should just resign. Make things simpler for everyone."   
  
"Which everyone?" Sam raises an eyebrow in incredulity and I realise from his non-reaction that he's probably been expecting that for some time. "Josh, if you quit, this administration would go down the tubes tomorrow and you know it. Nobody can have an ego the size of yours and not be aware of something as fundamental as that. We've all made our fair share of cock-ups. Columbia. Laurie. Haiti. MS, for God's sake. You were shot and you almost died, and none of us can detach ourselves from that. I think we can cut you some slack on what you went through afterwards. Now, the only way you can help us is by sticking around to fight this battle because I swear to God, if we haven't got you, then we don't stand a chance in hell."  
  
"Sometimes you have too much faith in me. You know that, right?"   
  
"I'm just saying maybe it's time you had a little more faith in yourself."  
  
"I don't…"   
  
"It's the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. The belief that you're tactless and egotistic and on occasion unbelievably dumb, but even given all that, that you're gunning for the right side and you would sooner die than let us down. That goes both ways, you know."   
  
"I don't know if I deserve that."   
  
"Start knowing. Because I have no plans to let you go anytime soon."   
  
I nod.   
  
"Josh." He sounds hesitant as he sits on the edge of the table and starts tracing the palm of my hand. "Before. When you told us to step back from having seen you be shot. That wasn't what you were going to say."   
  
"No." Sometimes Sam knows me far too well. "How did you know?"   
  
"You weren't talking to everyone, to start with. You were going to tell me to take a step back from being the person who's in love with you."   
  
"Yes."   
  
"I can't do that."   
  
"Sometimes you have to."   
  
"It isn't for you to decide."   
  
"It's…"   
  
"Hey. Head's up for you. I *am* the person who's in love with you, and asking me to step back from that is going to prove about as fruitful as asking me to register with the Republican Party." I shudder and he gives me a wry smile. "As of yet, records of your sessions with Stanley – either Stanley – have yet to find their way into the Washington Times. Leo's records from Sierra-Tucson did, and I stood by him, and you stood by him, and we got tailed and then screamed at for our trouble. So what really makes you think that any of us wouldn't do the same for you as we did for Leo?"   
  
"I screwed up."   
  
"You spent three months recuperating from a pretty damn severe gunshot wound. If anyone screwed up it was the rest of us for not realising sooner that nobody could come through something like that without there being some emotional scars."   
  
"I should have asked for help sooner."   
  
"Yes," he agrees easily. "You should have."   
  
"Before it got to the point that I yelled at my boss."   
  
"He got over it."   
  
"I know."   
  
"You know, you can blame yourself to the ends of the earth and back for… well, for whatever it is you're blaming yourself for, so I'll go with for not wanting help, but you can't blame yourself for that any more than we can blame ourselves for not forcing help onto you."   
  
"Wasn't your fault."   
  
"It wasn't yours, either."   
  
I choose not to dispute that before Sam gets even more worked up than he already is. We've had more conversations than I can count about how he – he personally, I should clarify, not 'he' as a collective term for the staff – should have noticed that something was up, and how it took me blowing up in the Oval Office and Donna pointing it out before he paid any real attention beyond avoiding me. Sam Seaborn can beat himself up over things better than any of the rest of us would ever do it for him. Even when there was nothing he could have done to avoid the inevitable. Like this.   
  
"Okay. It was just something that happened."   
  
"Okay."   
  
"Did you…" I cough awkwardly and try to steer us away from the baring of souls moment that just occurred. "Were you looking for me for a reason?"   
  
"For that. And for this." He kisses me and I grin. "And mostly 'cause Toby wanted me to remind you that you've got, you know, a national Convention to attend and so you should quit wallowing in self-pity."   
  
"Yeah. We should…"   
  
"And Donna says that your phone hasn't stopped ringing all morning and to let you know you've got lunch with Senator Casey, and she's scheduled you to meet tomorrow with Senator Russell's chief of staff. She seems to be operating under the illusion that I'm her new secretary."  
  
"I'm going."   
  
"Motorcade's due to arrive in five minutes. Tell Toby I'm on my way up."   
  
As I leave the basement room, which is even smaller, smellier, and less functional than the one at the White House that we launched the Sagittarius operation in over a year ago, I feel in my jacket pocket for the messy sheet of paper that I've spent the morning, on and off, drafting a letter of resignation. I suppose in my head, I didn't need Sam to tell me that quitting wouldn't solve any of our problems and truthfully, it would only make them worse, adding a 'left the White House under scandalous circumstances' spin to the whole situation, but sometimes he has to bring me back from the edge of doing something monumentally stupid.   
  
Before I get into the elevator, I tear the letter up into six pieces and toss them into the nearest trash can. It's not the first time I've done that, and it probably won't be the last, but for today at least, Ann Stark won't get rid of me that easily.   
  
______________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
Jesus, three months. I had a much better footnote than this one written, but managed to lose the floppy disc which had the file and notes of this chapter saved on it. To that end, I'm unendingly grateful to Krista for e-mailing me a copy less than twelve hours after I frantically requested one. Right. My point. I apologise for the massive gap that seems to have occurred between Chapter 8 and Chapter 9, but real life got sort of aggressively in the way. Read: A-levels. The exams are over, though, and hopefully for at least the summer, I'll be able to update with some sort of regularity. I'm not going to give a deadline for the next part, mostly because I never seem able to stick to them, but I'll say that it shouldn't be *too* long, as it is semi-written in my head, and parts of it at least seem to have made it onto paper already. Plus, in ten days, I'll be six hours away from getting Season 4 over here in what seems to be Amish country in terms of television scheduling.  
  
Chapter 10: In Order To Form A More Perfect Union... coming *really* soon, I hope. 


	10. In Order To Form A More Perfect Union

Chapter 10: In Order To Form A More Perfect Union  
  
"We, the people of the United States…"  
  
"Josh."  
  
I keep my eyes fixed on the podium in the hopes that if I ignore the Vice-President, maybe he'll go away. Juvenile, possibly, but desperate times and all that. I want to hear this speech. Take thirty minutes to enjoy the glow of the thing. Even if my involvement in the actual writing process was limited to being Toby's target for his rubber balls when he wanted to throw them at something that made a more satisfying sound than the thump on the wall, and to keeping Sam supplied with caffeine. That's not the point. The glow. Of the thing. It's not like we won't all be brought back down to earth with a thump tomorrow morning.   
  
"Josh."  
  
Unfortunately, John Hoynes is incapable of taking a hint even when they're not so much hints as they are veritable battering rams.   
  
"Mr Vice President."  
  
"This is a good night for you."  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
I refrain from pointing out that had he not defected from the administration, it would have been a good night for him, too. We're stuck with him until January. When he leaked the news that he would be challenging us – a leak, by the way, that we were left to find out through a no-name reporter in the middle of a press briefing – he didn't accompany it with a letter of resignation.  
  
"Who's the new guy going to be?"  
  
"You'll find that out in about ten minutes, sir."  
  
It's not public knowledge and it's not information that we've made available to the press, but most Democratic members of the House and the Senate know. I'm amazed he hasn't already found out. There's an uncomfortable silence. I have no intention of breaking it and he clearly doesn't plan on going away and leaving me alone. I would bet actual money on what he's here to say, but he doesn't seem to be in any hurry.  
  
"So, you and Sam."  
  
"Right."  
  
"Were you two… you know… when you were working for me?"  
  
I don't think that I have, in my life, said the words 'no' and 'comment' as much as I have in the last four days. Nobody, aside from our friends, knows any details of our relationship. That doesn't seem to stop them writing about it, but still. And no. We weren't. When I was working for Hoynes. We may have been a lot of things – stupid, miserable, and poster children for denial come to mind – but Sam was never unfaithful to Lisa and I never cheated on the apocalyptic disaster of a relationship that was my years with Mandy. But I'm not about to tell him that.  
  
"With all due respect, Mr Vice President, I don't believe that that's any of your business."  
  
"Josh, you're both men, you're both senior advisors to the President, and you're sleeping together. Your personal life…"  
  
"Will remain that way until it jeopardizes my ability to do my job or until it causes me to break the law. Sir."   
  
And I have the backing of Sam Seaborn, my mother, the White House senior staff, the President of the United States, and forty-six percent of the American people. I don't much care about the other fifty-four percent so long as it doesn't cause us to lose reelection. It's none of their business either.  
  
"I was going to say that it stopped being your personal life as soon as you got into the White House."   
  
Sure. Did you hear the rumor that the President has multiple sclerosis and he never told anyone?  
  
"I'm didn't withhold anything from my constituents – and I'm not an elected official, so actually, had no constitutents to withhold anything from in the first place – and I'm not doing anything illegal." I'm going to have to hope my mom is taping this because I seem to be missing a significant proportion of the live show. "John…"   
  
"Mr Vice President."  
  
"Mr Vice President," I repeat, making a face inside my head. "How about you just tell me what you came over here to tell me."   
  
"Josh…"  
  
"Sir. You'll be seeking the Presidency as a third-party candidate, right."   
  
"No."  
  
"What?"   
  
"I won't be running as a third-party candidate."  
  
"You wo… I'm sorry, what?"   
  
"I'm dropping out of…"  
  
"Yes. Thank you. I heard." It's that, you know, my ears are hearing the words and my ears are connected to my brain, but my brain is refusing to process that. I make a couple of false starts before I finally manage to get a full sentence out."Mr Vice President, what in the name of God are you talking about?"   
  
"I had been living under the delusion that this was news that would make you happy."  
  
"I suppose."   
  
"It doesn't?"  
  
"It… I don't understand why you're doing this."   
  
"I want to do the right thing. For once." He looks as though, in a less potentially public forum, he would laugh. "I made some mistakes. I made some decisions that I wish I hadn't. I was never the man you wanted me to be. After the MS, I didn't think that you guys would win re-election in a million years, but the Democrats, at least… they still want him to be their President. Josh, if I run, neither of us will win. I know that and you know that and your pollster knows that and so does probably the intern in the basement, and if I'm being given a choice between Jed Bartlet and Robert Ritchie, then the truth is that I still want him to be my President, too."  
  
"I appreciate that."   
  
"Let him know that I'm through. And that starting tomorrow morning, I'll be endorsing his ticket."  
  
"You don't want to hear who else is on it before you commit to that?"   
  
"I don't need to."  
  
"Well… okay, then." I glance briefly at the podium before returning my eyes to Hoynes. "Thank you, Mr Vice President."   
  
"Least I could do."  
  
He nods and backs away. I blink. Several times. I waste a good minute and a half wondering if Donna slipped some kind of mind-altering substance into my coffee this morning before I remember that hell will freeze over before Donna brings me coffee, hallucinogenic or otherwise. I glance reflexively at my surroundings and realise that I'm standing in the middle of the Democratic National Convention looking as though I've completely lost control of my higher brain function and my motor functions.   
  
With an effort, I pick my jaw up off the floor and try to consider this calmly.  
  
It takes another thirty seconds for me to reach the decision that that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.   
  
I'm having trouble deciding what to feel. Part of me is relieved that this is no longer the three-way race we all expected. While I'd still sell my soul for my Republican counterpart in this campaign to not be Ann Stark – between her uncensored opinion of me and mine of her, her history with Toby, her last encounter with CJ, and the glowering look we all get over the top of his glasses every time she's been mentioned in Sam's hearing in the last four days, I'm seriously considering the feasibility of us lasting the final seven weeks of this campaign without any of us having to meet with her – it's less… calamitous for her to be doing what she's doing if we're not running against our soon-to-be ex-Vice President at the same time as we're running against her boss. Part of me wants to know if that was an alien inhabiting John Hoynes's body and that part isn't completely kidding. And, yes, part of me is exceedingly pissed that he had the nerve to ask what he asked.  
  
Relief seems to be winning. Marginally. Just.   
  
It doesn't negate the fact that I wasn't aware John Hoynes even knew there was such a thing as being gracious loser. The production the President had to go through in order to convince him to become the Vice Presidential candidate on the '98 ticket is testament to his inability to concede defeat. Therefore, I can probably be excused having just been knocked back on my ass by having been handed what amounts to his complete withdrawal from any part in this race, plus his endorsement for our part in it.  
  
I put the issue of the world having pretty much just tilted on its proverbial axis to one side and redirect my attention to the President.   
  
"It's over two centuries since an alliance formed on the commons at Concord, Massachusetts, and in that time it's possible that we've lost sight of what we came here to do. The world has changed, and we have changed with it, but that does not mean that we should no longer stand for those values. We are for freedom of speech everywhere, we are for freedom of worship for everyone, we are for the freedom to learn for everybody, and those values are more relevant to our society today than they have ever been. America was founded on these values. It's time we took America back. We are for the right to live, to learn, and to love for everyone, regardless of their gender, colour, creed, or orientation."  
  
What?   
  
When the hell did that happen?  
  
"These are great challenges, they are challenges worth meeting, and they are challenges too great for a Potemkin presidency."   
  
When did that happen?  
  
I've read this speech. Many times. I've read that paragraph, and the right to love wasn't in the staff copy yesterday, the list of 'regardless of' stopped after creed, and I'm pretty sure I would have remembered that sentence in which the President just stood at a podium and called Ritchie a puppet had it been in the draft they gave me.   
  
When I get Toby on his own, I'm going to kill him.  
  
I would add the President to that, but I'm pretty sure the Secret Service would have me on the ground before I got within two feet.   
  
When I cast my eye around for Sam in the sea of staffers, his face has a look on it that says he's thinking homicidal thoughts, a look that I suspect is mirrored on my own.  
  
"It is an honor and a privilege for me to introduce the person who will be working alongside me in these endeavours, my nominee for the Vice Presidency of the United States, Admiral Percy Fitzwallace."  
  
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________   
  
April 2002 – Five Months Earlier  
  
  
  
"We have a problem."   
  
I made this announcement to Toby, Sam, CJ, Joey – and, by extension, Kenny – Donna, Ed, and Larry when I dropped a pile of folders on the table in the Roosevelt Room on what felt like the first Monday morning since the Iowa Caucus that I'd been in Washington and not on the road. An announcement that was barely a blip on anyone's radar, as Toby pointed out in no uncertain terms.  
  
"We have any number of problems, Josh, not the least of which is a re-election campaign defined as problematic at best, so if you wouldn't mind being a little more specific."   
  
"The South Carolina primary is next week."  
  
"Having been a professional political strategist my whole life, not to mention that my boss is running in it, I think I speak for everyone when I say that we knew that."   
  
"And," I continued, ignoring Toby, "Before anyone says that I'm getting worked up over this too early, you all know as well as I do that once we get to Super Tuesday, it'll get put off and put off and before we know it, it'll be the Convention and we'll have to do this by picking names out of a hat."  
  
"Vice President," Sam said.   
  
"Right."  
  
"We don't have an incumbent."   
  
"Not unless we feel it's showing political strength to welcome back the guy who defected last fall with open arms, no. Leo wants a shortlist by Wednesday."  
  
Coming up with a list of names in sixty hours was more difficult than it sounded. To begin with, the list of names needed to be electable, left-wing, but not so left-wing that we would lose the moderates, and preferably having served time in the military. We all continued to believe that Jed Bartlet was our real thing, after the MS, after everything, but none of us were dumb, and we knew that having Hoynes on the ticket in '98 had delivered the south, the military, and the moderates, three groups that wouldn't have elected a liberal academic former Governor from New England, particularly one who never served in uniform. On top of that, our names would have to be people who we had a realistic chance of getting to accept the nomination.   
  
Plus, we were trying to do this while prepping for a primary and, you know, doing our actual jobs.  
  
Sam was passing by my office on the Tuesday afternoon for… something that I'm sure neither one of us could remember now, and we both opened our mouths to ask the same question at the same time.   
  
"You getting anywhere with Hoynes's replacement?"  
  
"No."   
  
Sam was sitting on my desk and I was slumped against the doorframe. I had been trying to do the thing with my back flat against the wall that's supposed to relax me – might work, even, if I could ever do it for long enough before someone slammed a door into my face – but had ended up just using the wall to prop me up.  
  
"Are you okay?"   
  
"Tired." I offered him a tiny grin. "I didn't think it would be so hard this time."  
  
"You didn't think the President had multiple sclerosis," he pointed out quietly. "Not your fault. Nobody's fault."   
  
"Not that. We're all doing two jobs, and I'm not saying I regret this decision, because the now thankfully ex-campaign staff were doing a pretty good job of losing this election spectacularly, I'm just saying, you know, there aren't forty-eight hours in a day. Plus," I waved a hand around. "We weren't supposed to have to look for a VP. That was supposed to be one decision we made in the first campaign that we didn't have to make in the second."  
  
"I know."   
  
"Yeah."  
  
"We'll get there."   
  
Sam got up to leave and, as he got to the door, touched my fingers briefly. Our relationship was still so much of a secret then that it was practically classified, and while we had never had any real paranoia about acting the way we had always acted, it wasn't like he could just give me a 'real' hug right there in my office with the door open. So I got miniscule physical contact and an exhausted smile. Sometimes, like then, that was enough.  
  
"We need to figure it out tonight. We're going to be here late."   
  
"So we'll be here late." He shrugged. "Not like we haven't all done it before, too many times to count. We'll figure it out."  
  
And we did. The nine of us, with Chinese takeout, until three in the morning. After four hours, we had two possible names to give to Leo at senior staff five hours later, and we knew which one it would be. Because we knew that one of them would cite alcoholism, drug addiction, and a point blank refusal to leave his West Wing in the hands of, well, me, as reasons for him being unable to be elected Vice President of the United States. Because he forgets that the rest of us remember he overcame those problems, he runs the country, he served in one of the bloodiest, most pointless wars in history and would have died for his country, and we would die for him.   
  
So we took the other name.  
  
A man who had executed his roles in the Situation Room and the Oval Office flawlessly for over three years and counting, who nobody could accuse of being too liberal or non-military, and who we had all the respect in the world for.   
  
And who, coincidentally, would make history when he took the oath of office.  
  
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
I don't remember the last time I heard applause like that. The State of the Union, maybe, but I doubt it. The state representatives, the Senators and Governors and Congressmen and Congresswomen, they all know Fitz. Not personally and not like we do, but they know that he's a big part of the reason that we're not fightings wars with India, Pakistan, Columbia, Haiti, and Qumar right now. There are members of State who remember him being a big part of the reason, even when he was being forced to do his job by phone, that the Executive Branch and by extension the entire federal government didn't disintegrate into little pieces when the President was shot.  
  
That's something that'll give you a lot of faith in a person's ability to be the second-ranking member of his party, you know?  
  
The applause dies down and the President continues giving the speech, as I walk over to CJ and get her into a corner where we can still see a monitor but won't be overheard by the press.   
  
"Hoynes is dropping out."  
  
"He's what?"  
  
"He isn't doing what we all said he would be doing. It's going to be a two-man…"  
  
"Person," she snaps.  
  
"A two-person race," I correct myself in the interests of not wanting to, you know, die. "Us and Ritchie. Hoynes is through."  
  
"What's he asking for?"  
  
"Nothing." I'm a little surprised when I realise that that's true. "He's giving us his endorsement. Said he wanted to do the right thing. Mostly," I admit, "I think it's that he doesn't want Rob Ritchie to be the President of the United States and he recognises that there's a far greater chance of that happening if he stays in and splits the left. He's a pain in the ass, CJ, always has been, but he's still a Democrat."  
  
"We're releasing it?"  
  
"Nah. Let him. He's doing it himself tomorrow morning."  
  
"Josh…" She eyes me carefully. "You know that you don't owe him anything for this, right? If anything, it's what he should have done a while ago."  
  
"I know. But let him do it himself. Control the news cycle; we tell the press now, that's going to be the story. We've done good, we should get our moment to just know that we did good and not need to worry about what happens next, and if that means he can drop out of the race on his own terms and not have us do it for him, we'll suck it up."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"It's been a crazy week," she notes.  
  
"Have you been moonlighting at the Department for Sublime Understatement?"  
  
"We haven't had much time to talk."  
  
That gets my attention in a hurry. Usually, when CJ refers to us needing to talk or not having had time to talk, it means I've done something monumentally stupid and I'm going to get loomed over and yelled at. She bites back a laugh at my apparently obvious paranoia.  
  
"I'm not going to shout. Can't, really, not here."  
  
"Good."  
  
"Just… look at this. We made it. We've had possibly the worst first term in the history of the White House…"  
  
"You can say that again," Toby mumbles, as I notice that the staff have started to gravitate over to us as the President enters the final section. "MS."  
  
"Censure," I add.  
  
Donna looks across at me. "Big Tobacco."  
  
"Haiti."  
  
"The DEA agents in Columbia."  
  
"Sierra-Tucson."  
  
"Galileo."  
  
"Mrs Landingham."  
  
"Taiwan."  
  
"Prostitutes."  
  
"Call girls," Sam counters with a look.  
  
"India-Pakistan."  
  
"Mendoza."  
  
"Secret plan to fight inflation."  
  
It goes on. Sam, me, Andy, Donna, Charlie, CJ, and Toby, listing the reasons that the Bartlet White House should by rights have imploded – both metaphorically, and, by the time someone brought up the lighting of a fire in a welded flue, literally as well – a long time ago, while the President's voice swells behind us. Somehow I know that this is going to culminate in a lot of drinking on the plane, when we finally get out of here in the small hours of tomorrow morning. We start to wind down, and eventually, Charlie looks me straight in the eye.  
  
"To say nothing of too many people wanting too many of us dead for too few reasons, but we're all still here."  
  
"And it doesn't go away," I say, holding his gaze.  
  
We were in this position four years ago. Not having won the Presidency but having come further than nine months earlier we could have imagined possible. Last time, we didn't know what we were doing and we certainly didn't know what we were letting ourselves in for. This time, we do. It sounds insane to think that we're ready for another four years of working ninety hours a week, eating on the move, and not seeing home for days at a time. Sounds insane to think that we *want* that. This time last year, I don't think any of us could have said with absolute honesty that we did want it, but tonight, if only for these few hours, it feels like we're going to be given another shot at changing the world.  
  
It's a good feeling.  
  
The speech is coming to an end. I return my eyes to the President, who looks and sounds like we're feeling. That look on his face that says he's going to set the world on fire or die trying; a look that none of us have seen enough of for too long. Something else we need to change. We were kicking the final section around one night six or seven weeks ago, and Toby pulled out his copy of the State of the Union from our second year, set it down next to the preamble to the Constitution, and ten minutes later, we had the final lines.   
  
Lines that are going to make this audience stand up like it's coming from their socks.  
  
"The government is fallible; it's made mistakes and it will continue to make mistakes. But tonight, we leave behind our failures of the past and we set aside our worries of those failures in times to come, and we say that government can be an instrument of good, a place where people come together and where nobody gets left behind. *This* is America, *we* are the people, and we are *going* to form a more perfect union."  
  
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
Hey, look, guys, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Not entirely, anyway.   
  
Um, we finally have a candidate for Vice President; I wish I could take the credit for it but Josh brought it up in 'Stirred' and I've been fixated on getting him on the ticket ever since. I would like to point out, for the record, that I ditched Hoynes a long, long time before Sorkin did. Speaking of whom: the characters and canon depicted herein are the property of Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme, and I don't give a monkeys who writes it these days. If bits of the Convention speech sounds familiar, that's because one was a line of their *actual* Convention speech and the other was a line from their State of the Union, so I guess they don't belong to me, either... oh, and neither do any of the things I stole from the preamble to the Constitution, but I'm pretty sure that the Founders and Framers didn't have copywrite law.  
  
Thank you to everyone I usually thank for everything I usually thank them for. Rhiannon, in particular, for not yet declaring me insane and throwing away the key.  
  
Chapter 11: Chaos Theory. You know what? I'm not even going to say it. I always jinx it when I do. 


End file.
